


Valhalla

by F1_rabbit



Series: Valhalla [1]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7086232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F1_rabbit/pseuds/F1_rabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico's driving home from visiting a friend when he hits a man with his car. The man is taken to hospital and Nico won't leave his side until he's sure that he will recover, but things aren't as simple as that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Magni

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fasterthanthetardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fasterthanthetardis/gifts), [Missbeccif1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missbeccif1/gifts), [allbrazilliannightmare](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=allbrazilliannightmare).



The battlefield was set, the sun was rising over the mist, illuminating the valley. The smell of death was thick in the air, this was the third day that there had been battles here. Ketilløgh was grasping at his sword, the cold metal solid in his hand, a heavy reminder of what they were here to do.

His legs were pounding away, running as fast as he could towards the enemy, heart beating and lungs on fire.  Time stopped for Ketilløgh when he heard the first cry, soon it was all that he could hear and the crowd was slowing, stopped by the oncoming invaders.

There was a boy in front of him, sword ready for action and bright blue eyes blazing as he charged towards him. Their swords slammed together, the ringing of the metal echoed in his ears. Ketilløgh fended him off with all his might but he stumbled backwards, falling to the floor as his attacker pounced.

_This is it, I'm going to Valhalla._

He tried to raise his sword but it was wedged in the ground; he put a hand up to push the man back but all he could see was bright blue eyes, more wolf than man, before everything went white.

*

There was the roar of thunder and the screech of a mighty bird.  There were people all around him but their words sounded strange to his ears, they must be warriors from an older time. He tried to stand but a firm hand pushed him back down.

Ketilløgh tried to fight off his attacker but he couldn't see anything except the blinding white light. There were more hands on him and he was struggling to get free but then something stabbed his arm and he felt himself becoming powerless.

"Can you tell us your name?" It was a woman's voice, soft and calm. He couldn’t be on the battlefield anymore and yet there was a wall of noise surrounding him.

"Ket-" The bright light dulled and he could see his surroundings, there were people in strange black armour, with shiny vests. His vision must still have been altered as the colours looked odd, they weren't from a clan that he recognised. There was a tall Viking man standing at the edge of his vision, but his hair looked weird, it was arranged on the top of his head in a curious way, rather than left free or braided.

The others were putting a blanket over him and they were lifting him up, taking him into a small room. He was surrounded by unfamiliar things; he must be a long way from home, but how did he get here?

He looked around, trying to get answers but people keep telling him to 'relax'. Ketilløgh took a deep breath but the ground started to rumble, they were moving and he tried to break free from his restraints but the man stabbed his arm with a strange looking sword. He felt the fighting spirit draining from him before his eyes fell shut and he drifted off to sleep.

*

A flash of blond hair and pale skin appeared in front of the car. There was the squeal of tyres and the sickening thud of something hitting his car, even with Nico's reactions there wasn't time to stop before he'd hit the man.

He felt his pulse race and his mind was reeling with what had just happened. Nico leapt out of the car and rushed to his side, checking his pulse and he was relieved when he felt a faint heartbeat.

The man was unconscious; his breathing was ragged and pulse weak. Nico called for an ambulance, the panic rising in his veins as he tried to rouse the man. Every minute spent waiting for the paramedics was fraught with nerves, he prayed to a god he didn't believe in that the man would be okay.  Nico wasn't concerned with his punishment, or the possible complications it would cause for his job, but for the welfare of this intriguing man laid before him.

Nico couldn't believe what he was wearing, covered in heavy, rough fabric and crude armour, he looked like a film extra from one of the epics. Long blond hair framed his face, parts of it held in place with intricate braids. There was a trickle of blood running down from his temple but it was the only sign of injury on the man.

When the paramedics arrived they rushed in to help the man. They asked a lot of questions but Nico didn't have an answer to any of them, all he could tell them was that he'd hit the man with his car. Saying it out loud had caused another stab of guilt, but he knew that he was a good driver, he'd been paying attention to the road and the man had just appeared.

The police appeared not long after that, and they inspected his car before coming over to speak to him.

"Can you tell us what happened Mr Hülkenberg?" The police officer had a tiny pen poised over an equally tiny notepad, it looked comical in his giant hands.

"He just appeared from nowhere," Nico said, he was pale and his hands were trembling.

"You'll have to take a breathalyser test," the officer said, Nico never got his name. The officer pulled the little box from one of the pouches on his tool belt before offering the straw bit to Nico. He blew into the box, knowing that it would be negative, he would never do something as stupid as drink and drive.

However the knowledge that he did everything right, and a man was still injured, didn't make him feel any better. He was staring in anticipation as the paramedics helped the man, gasping when he came around, thanking the stars that he wasn't too badly hurt.

*

There was the sound of someone talking but Ketilløgh didn't recognise the sounds, was his hearing damaged? There was also a chirping sound, was there a bird nearby? Was he outside?

Ketilløgh tried to reach out for his sword, but he was unable to move his arms, or legs. He still felt sleepy, but he didn't know why. The last thing he remembered was the battle and then… Nothing.

Someone was touching him and he tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't see anything. He felt someone holding his hand, it was soft and comforting. Ketilløgh wanted to reach out to them, hold them but he couldn't move.

He willed his entire body to wake, to respond to his commands but there was nothing apart from the sound of someone talking in a language he didn't understand.

_Maybe this is Valhalla._

***

Marcus had been on an archaeological dig when a crane that was lifting the remains of a Viking boat had tipped over, sending the ship flying and he was unable to get out of the way before it had hit him. He was rushed to hospital; cracked ribs, punctured lung, broken leg and a nasty head injury. But he was recovering now, doted on by his boyfriend who had a much less risky profession.

"I'm thankful to have this time to put all the data from the dig together," Marcus said. It earned him a roll of the eyes from his boyfriend, Jo, who seemed to be more concerned about the fact that Marcus was in hospital than he was.

"I'm just glad you're okay." Jo kissed the end of Marcus' nose, it was one of the few bits of him that wasn't bruised, battered or broken.

Marcus' parents had been to visit, and his little brothers had drawn on his cast. They'd had to go home, his brothers still had school, but they called him every day to check up on him.

"What happened to that guy?" Marcus asked, pointing at the bed next to him.

"Hit by a car. They brought him here while you were asleep," Jo said, he knew that Marcus was bored having to stay in bed all day, but the man in the other bed didn't look in any shape to be talking to people.

"Poor thing. Has his family come to visit?"

"I've not seen anyone," Jo said, he wasn't sure why he felt guilty when he said this but it seemed sad that there was no-one to visit him.

"Check the name on the chart." Marcus waved his hands to get Jo to do it, even though he was shaking his head, but in the end he grabbed his crutch and limped over to the other bed, peering at the name on the chart.

"Anders Andersen."

"He's a John Doe," Marcus said, and Jo nodded to say that he understood the reference.

That must have hit home for Marcus, he was adopted, and he had told Jo once what it was like to have no-one around, no family. He was lucky to have such a wonderful family take him in as a teenager, and even though he was in his thirties now, he would always be their son.

For the next few days, while the man was unconscious, Marcus and Jo read to him, hoping that it would help him recover if he knew that people were visiting him.

*

"They told me that he was brought here. I just want to speak to him, to say I'm sorry," Nico said. The police officer hadn't told him, he'd read it off the file when he was in giving another statement. He wasn't sure why he was still here rather than back home in Germany but he couldn't leave without seeing the man. Nico knew it was selfish, he wanted to clear his conscience but he hadn't stopped thinking about the incident.

"I'm sorry, sir. It's family only for visiting. Are you family?"

Nico's nostrils flared and his eyes were wide, the nurse had backed away in anticipation of a fight. She would recognise him if he returned, even if he gave another name. There would be no way to pretend to be his family now.

*

Jo was strolling into the hospital, coffee in one hand, carefully balanced so that it didn't spill as he walked, the crutch made everything awkward, especially when it came to hot drinks. But Marcus had complained a lot about how the coffee at the hospital was awful, so as the dutiful boyfriend he'd gone out to get him a coffee from his favourite place.

As he came past the nurses' station he saw a blond man arguing with the nurse, they were talking in English so it allowed him to eavesdrop. When he heard the words, car accident, he knew that the man must be here to visit the mystery man in Marcus' room.

Jo's curiosity was piqued and even though he knew that he shouldn't, he wanted to find out more about the mystery man, even if that meant sneaking in a visitor.

Jo strode up to the blond man, hoping that his plan would work. "Hi. You're here to see Marcus right?"

"Erm…" The man looked confused, but the nurse looked relieved and Jo wondered what he'd just walked into the middle of.

"Engineering, wasn't it? We met at the Christmas party?" Jo was hoping that he would get what he was trying to do, this seemed so much easier than in the movies, where everyone apparently also had the power of telepathy.

"Yes." He fidgeted with the strings on his hoodie, his brow furrowed.

"You know this man?" The nurse looked like she'd be happy to get rid of this problem. She no doubt had more important things to do than argue with visitors.

"Yes, Marcus will be glad to see another face, he's going stir crazy." Jo didn't have to fake that bit, Marcus was sick of being in hospital, but he wasn't quite well enough to go home quite yet.

"You can show him to the room," the nurse said, an air of finality to her voice.

"Could you carry this for me?" Jo asked, handing the coffee to the man. He rearranged his grip on the crutch before starting off towards Marcus.

"Thank you. I'm Nico." he put out a hand to shake but realised it was the hand Jo was holding his crutch with.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Jo."

"Why are you helping me?" Nico didn't really need to know why, just as long as he got to see the man, to tell him that he was sorry.

"Scientific curiosity?"

*

Nico had told Jo and Marcus the whole story while sitting over the unconscious man, taking in the paleness of his skin and the fact that his long blond hair was now gone, cut and shaved so that they could operate on him. He looked so young, nothing more than a boy now that his beard was gone.

"What's going to happen to him?" Nico asked, running his fingers along the side of his face.

"He didn't come round after seventy-two hours, and each day in the coma it gets less likely that he'll wake up." Jo looked at his hands while he said it, unable to look Nico in the eyes, he knew that he must feel partly responsible for this and he didn't want to add to his pain.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Med school drop-out turned physicist," Jo said, he wanted to give Nico false hope, tell him that it would all be okay, but he knew the odds.

"So what happened to you two?" Nico knew it was rude to ask but he couldn't help.

"Him, hit by a wayward Viking ship that broke loose from the crane that was lifting it out." Jo pointed at Marcus for emphasis.

"All in the name of science!" Marcus laughed, Jo had deliberately put his accident like that so that it sounded less serious, for a while he had worried that he would lose Marcus, and that didn't bear thinking about.

"And I… Was involved in a bad quad bike accident when I was a teenager. So I get to go around now with this nifty beast." Jo waved his crutch for emphasis.

"I'm sorry." Nico couldn't believe how fickle fate was, how some people survived horrific injuries and others were killed by the most minor of things.

*

For the next forty-eight hours, Nico sat beside the bed, holding his hand and talking to him. Jo felt that he should keep an eye on Nico, mainly to stop Marcus having to do it, so he managed to sort out a few days of working from home, which meant using the hospital's Wi-Fi and fetching an endless stream of food and coffee for Nico and Marcus.

"So what do you do?" Jo asked, bored of marking papers and unable to focus on anything more taxing. He already knew what Nico did, but he figured that talking about something familiar might take his mind off things for a while.

"I'm a racing driver. So this is awful." Nico's head slumped onto the railing for the bed. Jo cursed the fact that his attempt at changing the subject, had failed in a most epic manner.

"I'm sorry." And Jo was, sorry for the fact that he couldn't manage small talk if his life depended on it, sorry that he couldn't do anything to help and sorry that the world seemed hopeless and futile.

Marcus snored and turned in his sleep, Jo ruffled his hair and he saw the stab of pain cross Nico's face.

"I'm going to get a coffee. Do you want one?" Nico asked, eyes already darting towards the door.

"Sure, thanks."

*

"Did Jo tell you that his dad was a racer?" Marcus asked, Jo was at work and there was nothing for him to do but talk.

"No."

"Back in the eighties. Jo was going to follow in his footsteps, but then his accident…" Marcus fidgeted with the little thing stuck to the end of his finger, monitoring his pulse.

Nico nodded, there didn't seem like much to say, but he was glad for the company. He wasn't sure why Marcus and Jo were being so nice to him, but he was grateful it. He hadn't even told his own family, he was worried that they would only be concerned about what such an accident would do for his career, he wasn't sure that they'd care that he was suffering inside, eaten up by guilt and remorse.

*

By the end of the week the doctors had made the decision that the machines were to be turned off. Nico had cried as Jo and Marcus tried to comfort him, even though the police weren't pressing charges, that hadn't eased his guilt.

Nico had sat with him until the small hours of the morning, knowing that there were only hours left. Jo had noticed his increasingly erratic behaviour and decided to stay, dozing by Marcus' bedside.

*

"He moved." Nico leapt up, waking Jo. "He moved his hand."

Jo grabbed his crutch and wandered over, the man's hand twitched where Nico was holding it. "It's just an involuntary reflex. I'm sorry." He rested his hand on Nico's shoulder, unsure of what else he could do.

"I just want him to wake up. I swear I can feel him listening to us."

"Get some sleep." Jo compressed his lips, before returning to Marcus' side, holding him tight, thankful that Marcus hadn't been more seriously injured.

*

There were doctors swarming into the room and Nico woke with a jolt to see his mystery man with his eyes wide open, struggling against his IV. Alarms were blaring and they were ushering Nico out of the way.

They closed the curtain and left Nico wondering what was going on. Marcus had held his hand until the noises fell quiet, and they drew the curtain back to reveal that they had taken out a lot of the tubes, and he appeared to be breathing on his own.

Nico rushed to his bedside, tears in his eyes as he grabbed his hand

"He won't be able to talk for a while," the nurse said, "But at least we'll be able to find out who he is."

"Thank you." Nico's tears ran down his cheek. He felt relief wash over his body, and it was more than the fact that he felt responsible for him, he got the feeling that he was a lost soul, just like him.

"Don't speak," Marcus said, in Danish, and the man nodded and relaxed a little.

Jo and Nico looked confused and stared at Marcus, as a nurse came bounding through to see the blood dripping down the man's arm. She tried to get him to let go of Nico's hand, but he wouldn't and she ended up bandaging his arm before trying to put a new IV into his other arm, wrapping it in bandages so that he couldn't easily rip it out.

"Hvad hedder du?" the nurse asked, and when she got no response she tried again in English, "What's your name?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and she rested her hand over his.

"Let me know if he's able to talk, the police are interested in who he is and where he came from," she said to Nico, and he nodded, he wasn't sure why he was being trusted with it, although he had sat by his bed for the whole time, when no-one else appeared to be looking for him, so right now, he was the closest thing that the mystery man had to a family.

*

Ketilløgh opened his eyes but everything looked strange, there was lots of white and there was the man from before, a fellow warrior? His clothes were strange, unusual colours and he couldn't work out what clan he was from.

He reached out to stroke his hair as he slept but there were tiny ropes all over his arm and something stabbing into his arm. Ketilløgh tried to remove them, but yanking them out only caused more pain and there was screeching surrounding him, like many people shrieking.

The man woke and there were tears in his eyes, Ketilløgh tried to reach out for him but he was holding his arm still as the blood trickled down his arm.

Ketilløgh went to speak but nothing came out, the man was speaking but he didn't understand him. He blinked at few times and that was when he noticed other people in the room with them.

"Don't speak," someone said, and he understood the words.

The woman held him until his arm was wrapped up with cloth, and the tiny ropes were attached to the other arm now.

"What's your name?" she asked, but he still couldn't speak, he tried but nothing came out.

She said something else in an unfamiliar tongue, and he wondered where he was. If this was Valhalla it was not how the legends made it out to be.

*

Nico shed a tear, he couldn't imagine anything worse than having no-one around who cared for him. He watched him drift off to sleep, still clinging to Nico's hand, and for the first time in over a week, he felt like things were going to be okay, that he was going to be able to get on with his life.

"I'm going to call my parents," Nico said, as he gently untangled his hand, trying not to wake his sleeping beauty. Jo nodded, Marcus was asleep too, and Nico slipped off down the hall, heading for the small garden at the back of the hospital where he could use his mobile phone.

There was rain in the air, but Nico didn't mind, he was wrapped up warm against the cool winter shower, and he was sure that it wouldn't last long. It was nice to smell the fresh air and the trees, after days cooped up inside the hospital, he felt like the smell of death and antiseptic was forever etched into his soul.

The phone rang and Nico felt tears brimming up again, he hadn't told his parents what had happened, but they were expecting him. He'd managed to cancel his plans for the week, it wasn't like his friends would miss him and he wasn't a good skier anyway. But his parents would worry about him if he didn't show up when he said would.

"Nico, are you still coming home this weekend?" his mum's voice was such a reassuring sound and he took a deep breath before speaking so that he could talk without crying.

"No, I can't." Nico bit his lip as the rain stung at his face. "There was an accident."

His mum gasped. "Are you okay?"

Nico realised that he should have started with, "I'm fine. A man ran out in front of my car."

"Oh honey." There was silence on the line, and Nico wasn't sure what to say, but his mum spoke, "Talk to me."

"He's ok, they had to operate but he's awake now." Nico let the tears fall, there was no point hiding any more, if anyone understood it was his mum, she was one of the few people that loved him unconditionally. "But they don't know who he is yet, and his family hasn't reported him missing." Nico took another deep breath as his mum comforted him. "I just don't want to leave him alone."

"That's admirable of you honey, but you didn't have to go through all this alone." There was the sound of his dad's voice in the distance and his mum was saying something that he couldn't quite hear before coming back onto the line. "Tell me where you are and we'll come to you."

Nico was so glad that he had his family, and it only made him feel worse for his mystery man. "It's okay, I've got friends around me. I'll be home as soon as it's all sorted."

"I love you, honey."

"I love you too, mum." Nico had a smile on his face even though the tears were still flowing, but the rain had eased off, and there was a hint of sunlight breaking through the clouds, a ray of hope.

*

He still couldn't talk, but Marcus had introduced himself, and his friend with the strange looking staff that he used to walk. Jo was trying to feed him, his arms were still too weak to manage it himself, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to eat it.

"You have to eat," Marcus said, but he shook his head.

It didn't look like any food that he'd ever seen before. The more Jo tried to feed him the more convinced he was that he didn't want it, and even Jo eating it didn't make it seem any more appetising. He wasn't sure why but he didn't trust it, and when Jo wasn't looking he threw it away.

Marcus and Jo were talking in a language that he didn't understand, but did they know that? Was it a cruel trick of his ears?

"How about chicken?" Marcus asked, and he ruled out his ears not working. They must be from a distant clan, with a strange language, but how did he end up so far away from home?

*

Jo was trying to force the spoon into his mouth, and from the way his lips were compressed he wasn't impressed that he wasn't eating.

"Can you tell him that he has to eat?" Jo asked Marcus, and he repeated it all in Danish. Jo had mastered Swedish, and although he understood the odd word in Danish, his fluency was nowhere near enough to speak to the man.

Marcus said something, the only word Jo recognised was 'spise' but from the look on the man's face, he wasn't convinced.

Jo ended up taking a bite of the beige mush, he thought it was rice but it had the consistency of potatoes, and he tried to make sounds that suggested it was appetising while wondering exactly what it was.

He scooped up some more of it and brushed it over his lips, but he only furrowed his brow.

"You're going to have to get better at this for when we have kids," Marcus said, laughing as he watched Jo chew the rest of the mush slowly while pulling a strange face.

"Kids?" Jo turned to look at Marcus, and while he was looking away, there was the sound of the tray clattering against the floor. The food was everywhere, and Marcus was laughing so much that his heart rate monitor slipped off his finger and set the alarms blaring, sending a small army of nurses flying into the room as the unimpressed nurse tried to silence the machines after reattaching it to Marcus' finger.

There was a weary look to the nurses, and it did seem to be this room that was causing all the trouble for them lately. Jo apologised profusely, as Marcus kept laughing, and he tried to clean up the mess, but with one hand, he was only making things worse.

"I'll get it," the nurse said, and Jo blushed, he was sure that the staff here would be glad to Marcus discharged, free to cause chaos elsewhere.

Everything was cleared up by the time that Nico returned, and Marcus was trying to work out what he wanted for dinner, since the mystery man wasn't the only one who had refused to eat whatever the beige mush was.

"How about chicken?" Marcus asked in Danish, and the man nodded. "Chicken it is," he said to Jo, who shook his head in disbelief.

"I'll help you," Nico said, and Jo looked at Marcus who was now grinning in anticipation.

"Behave for the nurses. Please?" Jo said as he grabbed his crutch, staggering out into the icy evening in search of chicken.


	2. Eir

"Are you going home for Christmas?" Jo asked, as Nico carried the bags filled with an endless assortment of chicken and chips, with coleslaw and beans. It would feed eight, maybe even ten, people easily, and yet Jo had no doubt that it would all be gone tonight.

"No, I don't want to leave until I know that he's got family, or someone, looking out for him."

Jo nodded, and he wondered if Marcus would be out in time for the holidays, he'd recovered well, although he was still on an IV drip, which would make taking him home a little harder. But if that was the only hurdle, Jo would do it, just so he could be out of the hospital. For all that he was putting a brave face on it, the longer he spent in the hospital, the more it brought back all the bad memories of his own stay after his crash all those years ago.

"If you need somewhere to stay, rather than sleeping on the plastic chair, you can have our spare bed," Jo said. He wasn't sure how he'd ended up looking after Nico and his mystery man, but after all the time together he felt responsible for them both.

"Thank you." Nico tried to obscure what they were carrying as they headed towards the fire stairs, it was the only way to sneak the food up without the nurses noticing. Jo was sure that they knew he was sneaking food to Marcus, which considering his injuries wasn't a problem, but their mystery man was meant to be under medical supervision at all times, so they'd probably have something to say about all the deep-fried chicken.

It took Jo a while to get up all the stairs, and Nico waited patiently so that he could get the door. They snuck along the corridor, as much as was possible with the crutch, and when they got back to the room Marcus was talking away as the man listened.

"The chicken has landed," Nico said, and Marcus laughed, sitting up in his bed so that he could eat. Jo shut the door and pulled the curtain round so that no-one could look in and see their feast.

Marcus waited for his food like a puppy waiting for its kibbles, and Jo could have sworn that he was more dog than man sometimes, although that wasn't always a bad thing.

Nico was showing off the contents of the bucket as the man picked through until he found a drumstick and he tore into it without hesitation, eating quickly as Nico stuffed fries into his mouth.

Jo nibbled at his burger, if he was honest he was sick of takeaway food, but he was only managing a few hours at home each day, which wasn't enough time to cook anything more than pasta. At least the others seemed happy with their chicken, and Jo was sure that the nurses wouldn't mind it, especially if it meant that they didn't have to clean hospital food off the floor three times a day.

Everyone had a smile on their face as they drifted off to sleep, the remains of their dinner hastily hidden by Marcus' bed, as they all dozed, only the occasional beep of the machines could be heard.

***

Jo had left early to take some work down to the university, they were breaking up for the holidays today and although there hadn't been classes in a few weeks, study leave and exams had meant that the amount of time that he'd taken off lately would go unnoticed, but that hadn't spared him from his share of marking for the exams. Thankfully he'd been allowed to do it all from the hospital, and a colleague had even dropped them in for him, but now he had to return them so that the grades could be entered and the students could rest knowing that they were done for the term.

Marcus had woke to an empty room, which was strange, either Jo or Nico was around all the time but neither of them were about. He sat up so that he could look over at the other bed, and he saw the man sitting, eyeing all the machines suspiciously.

"Hej."

"Hej."

Marcus was shocked to hear him speak, his voice was raspy from not speaking, but it appeared that he spoke Danish, and that meant that they could finally find out who he was.

"What's your name?"

"Ketilløgh."

"Where are you from?"

"Roskilde."

Marcus was scribbling it all down, just in case, and he was unsure of what else to ask. He wasn't sure what the police would need to know so that he could find his family.

"What's your last name?"

Ketilløgh looked confused and Marcus rephrased the question, he couldn't tell if Danish was his native language or not just from his accent, partly due to the rasp, but mostly due to the fact that Danish all sounded the same to him.

"What's your family name?"

Ketilløgh shook his head and Marcus changed the subject.

At least they had a name now, although Marcus was sure that the police were going to have fun trying to find Ketilløgh No-last-name.

He pressed the button for the nurses, and told them that their mystery man wasn't a mystery any longer. Well, his name wasn't a mystery.

*

"Hej."

"Hej." His own voice sounded strange, much more like an old man's than his own.

"What's your name?" Marcus asked.

"Ketilløgh."

"Where are you from?"

"Roskilde."

Marcus nodded as he said it, was he close to home after all? Had their clan invaded his lands? But it didn't explain all the strange things.

"What's your last name?"

He shook his head, he had no last name, only his name.

"What's your family name?"

He shook his head, he didn't understand.

Not long after that, more people arrived to ask questions, and he tried to answer them all. They were from a different clan again, dressed in black and yellow armour that looked unfamiliar to him. He still didn't know where he was, and his sword was nowhere to be seen.

*

The police had been and taken down everything that they could from Ketilløgh, although Marcus had listened in, and some of his answers were strange. The doctors were saying that it could be amnesia, or something else linked to his head injury, but Marcus couldn't quite get it out of his mind.

"There's no-one in the system with the name Ket-ill-ø-gh," Jo said. The Danish sounds eluded his tongue, Swedish hadn't been too tough to learn but Danish was something else. He was just glad that he got to teach all of his classes in English, and that they lived across the bridge in Sweden.

"Not a surprise. It hasn't been a common name in years. Centuries." Marcus tapped away at the keyboard, searching through missing persons.

"I'm just going to call him Kevin," Nico said, and Jo nodded, although he wasn't sure if he was agreeing or just acknowledging what he had said. Marcus raised an eyebrow but didn't say a word. _Kevin_ seemed happy with this, even though Marcus was sure that he understood very little English.

"Ke-vin," he said, sounding it out.

"See he's happy with it." Nico sat back in victory and Jo said nothing as Marcus rolled his eyes.

*

Nico returned, and Ketilløgh felt safe again. He still hadn't spoken to him, all his attempts to talk to him resulted in confused looks. Only Marcus could talk to him.

They were all talking in the strange language when Nico pointed at him and said, "Kevin."

"Kev-in." He wasn't sure what Nico was trying to tell him, but he liked the sound of the word when Nico said it, and he smiled because Nico was smiling.

***

A couple of days passed and the police had found nothing. At all. Not even a birth certificate or a visa. They had handed it over to Europol in the hope that they could find something, but it was going to take time, especially over the holidays.

"What did the police say?" Nico asked, as the sound of boots disappeared along the hall.

"They want to take him to jail," Marcus said, "They can't find any record of him, so they want to hold him just until they find out who he is."

"Can they do that?" Nico was pacing along the end of the room and it was making Marcus dizzy.

"I don't know, I'm not a lawyer." Marcus shook his head, he felt powerless and yet he couldn't just walk away from it all. He wished there was an easy solution, since there was slim chance that anything was going to happen before the New Year.

So far all of his conversations with Ketilløgh, _Kevin_ , as he seemed happy to be known now, had ended with him confused about the machines, about where he was, and Marcus felt sad that he seemed to be lost. He talked of battles, and Marcus had checked with all the recreation groups that he knew to see if anyone recognised him, but no-one did. Nico had thought that he might be a film extra, but that too had been a dead end.

Although this information had given him a way to talk to Kevin, to try and help him make sense of his surroundings, by relating it all to Viking things, which seemed to be working. If Marcus hadn't known any better, he would have said that he was a child, obsessed with one thing and figuring out the world through it, but he was clearly in his teens, if not older, which didn't bode well for his recovery.

Marcus was increasingly restless about it, since he was going to be discharged tomorrow, and that meant that he wasn't going to be able to help for much longer.

*

Jo came in that evening, food stashed in his rucksack, as he sat down to tell Marcus, and Nico, what a fellow professor had told him about Kevin's legal situation.

"We can keep Kevin out of jail," Jo said, as he picked the olives off Marcus' slice of pizza. He was sure that he'd said no olives, but he didn't mind since it just meant extra olives for him, so that was a win.

"Good." Marcus smiled as he munched on the olive free slice of pizza, and Jo looked at him with confusion written all over his face. "It's not that simple is it?"

"We have to take custody of him, and he has to agree to be electronically tagged." Jo looked at Kevin, who was now free of the IV only because he kept ripping it out, and who seemed perpetually confused as to where he was. But it was worth a try.

Jo took the papers out of his bag, and Marcus looked over them as he ate.

"So, what happens now?" Nico asked, "What if they don't find where he came from?"

"If they can't find out who he is…" Jo shook his head, it seemed unfathomable that anyone in this day and age could have no record. "He can claim asylum here, same as anyone else."

Nico slumped down in his chair, reaching out to hold Kevin's hand, and Jo wondered what else they could do, but it was a strange system that would see a person go to jail just for not having ID, when it was going to take months to run his DNA and fingerprints through all the systems.

At least he was doing what he could, and he just hoped that would be enough.

*

Jo waited until Nico and Kevin were asleep, before whispering to Marcus his concerns that Kevin seemed to be unfamiliar with the basics of living.

"He's just disorientated after his head injury." Marcus kept his voice low, but it didn't stop him glancing over to the other bed to check that they were both still asleep.

"What if he's not?" Jo wasn't sure that he could look after Kevin forever. There was a big difference between helping him get on his feet and caring for him permanently.

"Do you think it's an act?" Marcus scrunched up his face as he tried to work out what Jo was hinting at.

"No, what if he was like this before the accident?" Jo couldn't put his finger on it, but he hadn't heard of situations where people forgot what a shower was, yet still remembered things that they'd learnt in a history lesson and were able to talk about it at length.

"Does that mean we should just let him go to jail?"

"No." Jo shook his head, they were too involved just to walk away now.

"Then it's agreed. He comes home with us tomorrow." Marcus pulled his blanket up around him, and was softly snoring only seconds later. That was one way to win an argument.

*

The next morning Jo handed the paperwork over to the police, who looked unimpressed at having to do extra work. They had to explain several times to Kevin what they were doing, only for Marcus to tell him that it was a charm that would protect him in battle before he would allow them to tag him.

All the staff at the hospital seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as they got to bid goodbye to their two strangest patients, and all the trouble that they had caused.

Nico was the only one who was able to drive, Marcus normally did all the driving but with his leg in a cast, it was going to be a while before he was back behind the wheel.

Kevin had looked at the car with suspicion, and Nico felt a stab of guilt, it was the car that he'd ran him over with. Nico reached out to take his hand but Kevin still looked confused.

"It's a carriage," Marcus said, "But it doesn't need oxen to pull it."

Kevin nodded at the explanation and Marcus repeated it all in English for Jo and Nico, he wasn't sure how he'd ended up playing translator, but at least he was useful. It was going to be another couple of months before he was out of the cast, and his ribs, although just bandaged, were going to take equally long to heal.

Marcus had managed to get Kevin to copy him and put his seatbelt on, which was one less worry, and Nico had seemed fine driving, although that wasn't a surprise. There was a lot that had gone unsaid over the last couple of weeks in the hospital, but they wouldn't be able to tiptoe around it much longer.

The drive was nice, Jo sat in the front, directing Nico across the bridge into Sweden, and to their little flat which was going to be quite cosy for the next few weeks. Marcus had played tourist guide and pointed out all the things that they passed, and Kevin seemed fascinated by the bridge.

By the time they were pulling into their street, it was approaching lunchtime, and Jo wasn't sure that they had enough food in the flat to feed everyone.

"Once everyone's settled I'll go and get lunch," Jo said, and Nico smiled at the mention of food.

It took a while for Marcus to get up the stairs with his crutches, and Nico walked behind him, since Jo wasn't in any position to catch him if he fell. Three storeys had never felt so high, and Marcus was gasping by the time they were outside the flat.

Jo got the door and Kevin dashed inside as Nico followed, desperate to see what was in there. Marcus got as far as the sofa before making himself comfy, using the coffee table to rest his cast on, as Jo went to find the spare keys.

"Just in case you need to go out," Jo said, although the words 'don't leave Kevin alone' went unsaid.

"Thank you." Nico drew Jo into a hug. "I don't know how I can repay your kindness."

There was a cough from Marcus and Nico let go of Jo. "There was some mention of food?"

Jo laughed and shook his head, he was going to have to put the takeaway place on speed dial, and given the amount of food they needed, it was probably best that Nico went to get the shopping with the car.

"What do you want?" Jo asked, and Marcus chatted away to Kevin, deep in discussion of what food that they wanted.

"Chicken," Marcus said, and Nico nodded.

"Chicken it is."

*

He followed Nico everywhere, unable to talk to him and yet he felt a bond with him.

Nico took him from the place with white walls to Marcus' home, which had nicer clothes and plentiful food. There were strange objects everywhere but he was relieved to have Nico close by, for now, that was the only constant that he had.

He fell asleep that night with only one thing on his mind.

_I'm dead, and this is Valhalla._

*

After a busy day, Marcus decided to call it a night. Jo had made up the sofa so that Nico could sleep on it, but from the way Kevin was holding his hand, it was going to be hard to separate them. Luckily he was a similar size to Marcus so there was enough clothes for Kevin to wear, and he seemed glad at the improvement on the hospital gown.

Nico had managed to tuck Kevin into bed, and he'd held his hand until he fell asleep before slinking out to the living room.

"How can he not even remember his age?" Nico asked, he couldn't understand the police's indifference to finding out who he was, although it wasn't a priority to them.

"He doesn't have any knowledge of school, so there's a chance that he was raised away from society, with no comprehension of age."

Nico looked at his hands, it seemed like being hit by the car was the least of Kevin's problems, and Nico didn't know how to fix any of it.

"The police and doctors have put his age between sixteen and twenty-four," Jo said, "But that's a lot of records to check, as we can't even be sure that the name he gave us is his own."

There was a creak of the floor boards and Nico looked up to see Kevin standing by the door, he looked so young in the dim light of the little table lamp. He crept over to sit by Nico, and he wrapped his arm around him, stroking the side of his neck as he cuddled in.

"I'm going to sleep next to him," Nico said, "What's the word for sleep?"

"Sova."

Nico repeated it, miming the gesture for sleep, and Kevin seemed to understand. Without Marcus, Jo wasn't sure if the word was the same in Danish, but it appeared to work, so he could worry about his appalling grasp of Danish another time.

"If you need anything just knock."

Nico nodded as he led Kevin to bed, curling around him as he drifted off to sleep and Nico wondered how different his life would have been if he'd just left his friend's place when he said he was going to, rather than heading straight for the nearest McDonalds.

***

Jo had tried to sleep, but he was restless, and he'd ended up sitting on the sofa, quietly watching the tv as he tried to catch up on all the shows that he'd missed, and the last race of the Formula One season.

He'd tried not to mention it at the hospital, but thanks to how busy he'd been, he'd managed to avoid any spoilers, although part of that was due to the fact that Nico had been around for the entire time, and he didn't want to upset him.

Jo paused the recording and went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, he wasn't sure how many cups he'd had but from the furry feeling on his teeth it was probably too many. He wandered through to the living room to see Nico sitting on the sofa, Kevin notably absent, which meant that he was still asleep.

"Seventh, not a bad result." Nico nodded as he pressed play, and Jo sat down next to him.

"I haven't seen it yet," Jo said, "Marcus was injured on the Friday, and since then it seems like I've lived at the hospital, or at work."

"Sorry." Nico fidgeted with his hair, brushing it out of his eyes, and it made him look like a model. It was the first glimpse that he wasn't quite a mere mortal like the rest of them, although if Jo had to guess, even if Nico wasn't an F1 driver, he'd still be a strikingly handsome man.

"It's okay. My dad used to race, back in the eighties, and I was going to follow in his footsteps… And then this happened." Jo shrugged, he'd made his peace with it many years ago.

"Sorry."

They watched the rest of the race in silence, there wasn't much more to be said, fate was a fickle creature, and there seemed to be no way to avoid its wrath.

*

Porridge for breakfast had seemed to be satisfactory, and Marcus was sitting with a notepad, writing down everything that Kevin said, in a bid to work out what had happened to him.

So far he'd got a very detailed recollection of a battle, down to details about swords and armour that only a handful of people would know. It wasn't something that he could have looked up on the internet or seen in a documentary.

But there were no missing history professors, or PhD students, they were the sort of people that were missed. And if he was a foreign student, they were reported missing by the university because it meant that they were breaking the terms of their visa. So all this new information got him no closer to finding out who Kevin really was.

"Can you read this?" Marcus asked, sliding a piece of paper with a few simple Danish phrases written on it. They were all things that he had heard Kevin say, but he only stared at the piece of paper, tracing his finger over the ink.

Kevin shook his head and Marcus took it away. It wasn't unheard of for people to speak a language without being able to read it, especially with a language as complicated as Danish.

Jo had made lasagne, which was a nice change to all the takeaway food, and even Kevin had eaten it, although he was hesitant at first, but he'd followed Nico's lead. It seemed that he would do anything as long as Nico did it, which did make things easier, but it worried Marcus that maybe his age was lower than the police's original estimation.

Marcus was still trying to work it all out, when an idea crossed his mind. "Jo can you get my textbooks?"

"Do you need them right now? While we're eating?" Jo put his fork and knife down, he knew that he was going to do it, so he wasn't sure why he bothered asking.

"Yes." Marcus fluttered his eyelashes and Jo got up, pausing to give Marcus a kiss on the forehead as he went past.

"Any particular textbook?"

Marcus rattled off a long list and Nico got up to help Jo retrieve them from the shelf, carrying them over so that Marcus could flick through them while eating, and Kevin looked at the pictures with fascination.

He handed over one of the books so that Kevin could look through it, and he came to page with a picture of a rune stone on it, now stored in the National Museum, but originally located on the outskirts of Copenhagen, not far from where Kevin said he was from.

It had a picture of the Snoldelev Stone, and underneath it had its inscription written out in the runic alphabet.

"Gunnvaldr's stone, Hróaldr's son, reciter of Salhaugar," Kevin said, and Marcus leant over to look at the page, causing his cast to fall off the chair that it was balanced on and he let out a yelp as it hit the floor.

There was no Danish or English translation on the page, and yet Kevin had read it without any problem. Marcus flicked over the page, but there was nothing that said what the runes translated to, and Marcus stared at Kevin with his eyes wide, the pain long forgotten about.

"He can read runes."


	3. Hlín

Marcus had been a flurry of movement, shuffling around with his crutches as he tried to find more textbooks that had runes in them, anything that he could use to prove that he could actually read it, and hadn't just learnt the inscription of that one stone. Given his love of all things Viking, it wouldn't have surprised Marcus if he'd seen the Snoldelev Stone in the National Museum.

After over an hour of making Kevin read things, during which time he was starting to look increasingly unimpressed, Marcus slumped down on the sofa with a text book, trying to make sense of it all.

Jo was clearing up the plates, he'd learnt that there was no use disturbing Marcus when he was like this, although Jo was sure that he was the same while trying to solve the problems of the universe.

He made a cup of tea and two cups of coffee, Kevin had shown no interest in either, so he'd got him a glass of water, before sitting down next to Marcus who was lost in his thoughts.

"What are you thinking?" Jo asked, brushing a stray strand of hair away from his eyes.

Marcus sipped at his coffee, staring at Jo as though he was going to speak, but nothing came out. All eyes were on him, and Marcus blinked a few times before saying, "I don't think he's a Viking enthusiast… I think he's an actual Viking."

Nico gasped, and Kevin looked confused since they were all talking in English, but Jo just looked concerned.

"How many of those pain pills did you take?" Jo brushed Marcus' hair from his forehead as he peered into his eyes, trying to see if his pupils looked normal.

"I'm not crazy."

"I know you're not… But you've been through a lot lately." Jo tried to hug Marcus but he shied away from his touch.

"I'm not crazy, and I know how to prove it." Marcus stood up, using the sofa to balance. "We need to go to my lab at the university." He grabbed his crutches and headed for the door, even though his uninjured foot had only a sock on it, and there was snow on the ground after a cold night, which had shown no sign of melting.

"Okay. But you need to put your shoes on, and a jacket." Jo's tone of voice said that there would be no arguments, and Marcus nodded.

Nico helped Kevin into his jacket, zipping it up for him as he slipped on his hat and gloves. Jo got one of Marcus' trainers on, and found a bag to cover the bottom of his cast so that it wouldn't get soggy with the snow.

It wasn't a long walk to the car but it was fraught with danger as Marcus made his way slowly to the car, and it wasn't long before they were heading back towards Copenhagen, and Marcus' lab at the university.

Kevin seemed fascinated by the car and he asked Marcus a lot of questions about how it worked, which Marcus answered as best he could, but he'd had to ask Jo and Nico for help explaining the basics of the internal combustion engine. Marcus was sure that telling Kevin it was magic wasn't the best approach, but trying to condense one thousand years of technological developments into a few sentences was much more difficult than he could ever have imagined.

The car park for the university was deserted and Marcus got Jo to swipe his pass so that it would unlock the door and let them into the building. It wasn't until they got to the seventh door that Marcus wondered how Jo lived with this all the time, every door was an awkward nightmare and there were so many of them.

Two doors later they were into the lab, and Kevin glanced around at all the Viking artefacts that were lying around, waiting to be tested, or catalogued. He wandered up to a sword that had been recently found, and Marcus watched as he looked at it with a mixture of sadness and confusion.

"If you're right, everyone he ever knew, everything familiar is long gone," Jo said, and Marcus nodded, the part of his brain that was happy to find a real live Viking to talk to, was at odds with the part of him that felt sorry for Kevin.

Nico was next to Kevin, admiring the sword, and holding his hand so that he couldn't touch it, which Marcus was thankful for. Kevin seemed calmer now that he was surrounded by familiar things, and Marcus felt a stab of guilt, all the time in the hospital, while they'd thought that he had a head injury, he'd actually just been confused by all the modern technology.

He found out the things so that he could take Kevin's DNA, and got him to sit down on one of the office chairs. It took a while to get him to stop spinning on it, and Marcus had to show Kevin how the cheek swap worked on Nico. By the time he'd got the sample and started processing it, an hour had passed, but it was going to take much longer for the computer to compare Kevin's DNA to the samples from various bodies that they had exhumed during archaeological digs in the area.

"I think I know where we can take Kevin," Marcus said, he was busy typing at the computer, which Kevin watched with fascination, although this was probably the first time that he'd seen one up close, and they hadn't put the tv on at home over the last couple of days with all the excitement of having guests.

"Where?" Nico asked, as the computer beeped to say that it was processing.

"The National Museum."

*

A ten minute walk had taken them all twenty minutes, and Kevin had clung to Nico's hand as they made their way down the busy path. There were lots of little cafés that had people sitting outside with their warm drinks, despite the snow on the ground, and there were cars and buses trundling down the street. None of them were going particularly fast, there was a twenty kilometres per hour speed limit, but each time one passed he squeezed Nico's hand a little tighter.

Kevin glanced around, there were carriages everywhere, _cars_ , and they were so close to him. The rumble of them was unsettling and he held Nico's hand tight. He was shielding him from the cars, and he was grateful to have him close through all of this, even though he was unable to understand him. Only Marcus could talk to him, and the way he spoke was strange.

But that didn't stop him listening to everything that Nico said, and trying to figure out the strange words that he used. He wanted to talk to him, to tell him how nice it was that he kept him company through this all, but he didn't know the words.

Nothing looked familiar, the buildings were large and towering over him and he felt so small compared to it all. The trees were only constant, still majestic and grand, even without their leaves for the winter.

There was a loud screech, and Kevin felt Nico hold him tight, pulling him close.

Jo watched at Nico stopped Kevin from walking out in front of an HGV, it was the first busy road that they'd come to and the crossing was on red for pedestrians, but if Marcus was right, there was no way that Kevin would understand that.

The traversed the last block to the National Museum with little fuss, it was quieter since most of the tourists were probably at the Christmas markets, or Tivoli, despite the weather.

As they approached the entrance, Marcus looked at Jo and whispered, "Please tell me this is a good idea."

Jo stopped on the steps so that he could rest his hand on Marcus' shoulder. "It's sweet of you to try and give Kevin something that will comfort him, and no matter what happens, I'll be standing by you." Jo leant in for a kiss, and Marcus smiled as they made out, both precariously balanced on their crutches with only each other to keep themselves up.

Neither noticed the way Kevin looked at them, fascinated by the affection, and he held Nico's hand tighter as they wandered into the museum.

Marcus was telling him about this strange land that he was in, and sometimes it felt almost like home, but not quite.

*

They had been wandering around the museum for half an hour when Marcus realised how big the place was. So far they'd made it to the Viking age, and Kevin was leaving fingerprints over all the glass cases as he looked at the damaged remains of Viking culture.

Jo couldn't believe Marcus' theory, not without scientific proof, but there was something about the way that Kevin looked at all the artefacts, and the way he talked to Marcus about them, that had Jo wondering if it was a possibility.

They wandered into a dark room, with two cases containing skeletons, and Kevin looked at them both with a tear in his eye. Nico held him, wrapping him up in his arms as the look of pain on his face faded.

Jo declared it time for a break, and Nico's stomach rumbled.

"Food?" Nico looked at Jo with expectant eyes, and there was a collection of blond eyelashes being batted at him.

"Follow me."

*

There was a small restaurant around the corner, Iboo's, who did the best pizzas, and the best curry. As well as chips, burgers and the like, so that would be Nico happy.

Kevin sniffed the air suspiciously as the wandered in, and they sat at the table in the corner so that they could pile up all the crutches out of the way.

Jo was in heaven, the smell of spicy food was something that he'd missed over the last couple of weeks, but he didn't want to advertise the fact that he'd been sneaking food into Marcus, and Kevin.

Nico was still holding Kevin's hand, and he was eyeing the menu as he looked at the pictures. Marcus read it out to him, and he looked at Nico as if to ask what he was eating. In the end they ordered a lot of food, with the intention of sharing it, although having seen Nico eat, Jo wasn't sure how much would get shared.

Marcus talked away to Kevin, only translating little bits when Nico or Jo asked what he was saying.

"How do you feel about all this?" Marcus asked, as Kevin looked confused.

"Feel?" Kevin glanced around at his strange surroundings. "Are you sure this isn't Valhalla?"

"I'm sure. This is the year two thousand and fifteen, you were in an accident and you ended up here."

"When can I go back?" Kevin asked, and he looked at his hand clasping Nico's, whatever had happened, he knew that going back, meant going back alone.

Marcus shook his head, and he knew that he shouldn't be giving Kevin all these ideas, that there was still a chance that he was just confused after his head injury, but the more he spoke to Kevin, the more it made sense.

"I don't know if it's possible." Marcus reached out to rest his hand on Kevin's arm. "We don't even know where you came from."

Jo and Nico were staring at them both, waiting for them to explain. The conversation had got quieter, more serious, and Kevin was gripping Nico's hand as though he was trying to break the bones in his hand.

The food arrived and the tension dissipated, Nico diving in to take a slice of pizza as Kevin did the same, looking at the melted cheese with curiosity, before taking a bite. He smiled as he ate the pizza and Nico looked proud of him.

Marcus watched Jo try to get some of the saag paneer as Nico heaped it onto his pizza, considering they'd had breakfast only a few hours earlier, Nico ate as though he hadn't been fed in a while.

Kevin took a tiny spoonful of the curry that Nico had offered to him, and scrunched up his nose at it, chewing slowly before going back to the pizza.

"How long is the computer going to take?" Nico asked, and Marcus shrugged, it would be done whenever it was done and not before.

"Maybe we should show Kevin the rest of the museum," Jo said, "Let him see all of history."

Marcus nibbled at a chip, suddenly he wasn't so sure that it was a good idea, and he wasn't sure how Kevin would react to seeing all of history unravel before his eyes.

No-one else seemed to think it was a bad idea, so once the food was demolished, they wandered back to the museum, before taking Kevin around all the displays. They showed him all the worst things in human history, all brought together in the name of education, the hope that humanity could learn from its mistakes.

Nico held his hand the entire time, and by the time the museum was closing, Kevin looked so pale, and so young. Jo was sure that they'd done the wrong thing. All they'd managed to achieve was traumatising an already vulnerable young man, leaving him more confused.

*

Marcus had made him read runes, over and over again, but he was no simpleton, he had mastered the art of runes.

After that Nico took him to more strange places, each one more terrifying than the last. Marcus was reading things out to him but it made no sense, how could they possibly see the future? Were they gods?

_I'm dead, and this is Hel._

*

The sun had set and the snow had an icy quality to it which made walking back to the university difficult for Marcus. He'd thought about just ignoring the computer and coming back tomorrow, but curiosity got the better of him, and he fought his way down to the lab.

Jo was trying to hold him steady but he was in such a rush that he kept getting knocked by the doors as he went. Nico took his pass and opened the doors so that there was more chance that Marcus would get back to his lab in one piece.

Once they were back in the lab, Kevin clung to Nico, and Marcus felt awful inside. He wasn't sure if he wanted Kevin to be a Viking or not. On one hand it would mean taking him to the museum wasn't a terrible idea, but then he was stranded in an unfamiliar land, an unfamiliar time, with no-one to turn to. But if he wasn't, then they were playing with someone's fragile mental state, and they would probably have no option but to turn him over to the state, and let them take care of him.

He typed frantically as he logged into the computer, holding his breath as he waited for the screen to load. And then he saw it – a DNA match – to a thousand year old skeleton that used to be his mother.

*

Marcus came round to Jo saying his name repeatedly as he shook him, and when he opened his eyes he could hear the relief in Jo's voice.

"You fainted, falling off your chair and sending everything flying."

"He's a Viking. He's actually a Viking. A real live Viking and he's just standing in the lab," and with that, Marcus fainted again.

It took a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar to get Marcus to stop feeling dizzy, and once he was steady on his crutches, he went over to the far side of the lab, where there was a glass door that led to a little room, like a large storage cupboard, except everything was white and the air was cool.

There were lots of drawers, and Marcus looked at the codes on each one before stopping. His hand hovered over the handle, and he pulled it out slowly to reveal the skeletal remains of someone, stored for analysis.

"This is Kevin's mother."

*

Nico came round to Jo slapping his cheeks as Kevin held his hand. The shock of seeing the centuries old bones as her child stood next to him had been too much for his mind to comprehend.

"I think we should take everyone home," Jo said, in his calmest and most rational voice. "It's been a long day."

Marcus closed the drawer, and Kevin helped Nico to his feet. Once they were out of the little room, the colour returned to Nico's cheeks and it was Kevin's turn to hold him.

Jo was glad that Kevin didn't know what was going on, he couldn't imagine seeing the remains of his loved ones, not like that. The mind wasn't meant to comprehend the complexities of time travel.

Marcus locked up the lab, it would sit empty until the New Year, and he could deal with it all then. Jo wrapped an arm around him, holding him as they wandered back to the car, and the drive back was relatively silent, there wasn't anything to say. There weren't the words to deal with a situation like this, because no-one had ever dealt with a situation like this before.

*

They were back where they started, and he was convinced that this was the home of the gods, with all its magical objects.

They talked a lot, and Marcus had fallen down. They moved to a smaller room that was cold, and he heard a word that sounded familiar – mother.

He looked at the bones as Nico collapsed and his blood ran cold. His mother was nothing more than bones, and even he knew that it took a long time, far longer than any man lived. This wasn't Valhalla, or even Hel, but somewhere else altogether.

_I'm not dead. But I'm lost._

*

Jo was exhausted when they got home, and he decided to get a bath, relax a little. He was enjoying the comfort of the warm water when he heard the door open, and Kevin wandered in, not bothered that Jo was in the bath as he headed to the toilet. Jo sat up so that certain things were covered, and Kevin proceeded to pee, flushing the toilet when he was done, before leaving.

 _Well at least he's toilet trained,_ was the only thought he had, and he reached out from the bath to lock the bathroom door, guaranteeing him a little peace and quiet.

It had lasted only fifteen minutes, but it was enough, and Jo got out of the bath as Marcus burst in, shaking his head. They never locked the door, it was usually just the two of them, but now they were going to have to work something out with four of them living together.

*

Cup of tea in hand, Jo wandered through to the living room in a thick fluffy dressing gown, using the sofa to balance rather than his crutch. Kevin was dozing on the sofa, his head resting on Nico's lap, and Jo sat down on the coffee table, next to where Marcus was resting his cast, because he was too tired to try and bring one of the dining room chairs through.

"Kevin said something worrying," Marcus said, and he waited to make sure that Kevin was asleep before continuing, "He asked me if Christianity is bad."

"Oh," was all that Nico could manage.

Jo on the other hand said, "Yes," before shaking his head and then saying, "Maybe?"

Nico stroked Kevin's hair and he stretched out his arms before cuddling in again and letting out a soft snore.

"We did show him how they took over his homeland, executed anyone they deemed a 'witch' and then started mass genocide."

"Yeah, it wasn't a good idea to show him what he missed in a thousand years." Marcus put his hands over his face, rubbing at his eyes until he was sure that they were pink and puffy.

"So 'no Christmas' is looking like the clever option right now," Jo said, and Marcus at least smiled a little.

"What are we going to do with him?" Marcus bit his lip and his forehead wrinkled up as he thought about the implications of it all, if they found out what he was he would never be free, they would study him, do horrible things to him.

Marcus felt the tears fall and there was nothing he could do to stop them, he felt responsible for this mess, and he didn't know how to make it better.

"We can't tell anyone what he is. No-one. Not until we figure out how to keep him safe."

Jo nodded and Nico held Kevin tighter, although they'd only known each other for a few days, he was sure that Nico would do anything to protect Kevin.

***

"Police!"

Jo woke to the sound of their door being kicked in and he stumbled out to see armed police officers raiding them. He tried to get to where Kevin was sleeping but they pinned him to the floor, and that was when he saw Kevin being dragged out, with Nico handcuffed to him.

He heard a loud thump, and then the sound of Marcus yelling in pain. Jo tried to fight, he grabbed one of Marcus' crutches from where they were lying behind the sofa and used it to hit the officer, which got him punched in the face for his troubles.

His vision faded, and he watched the world go fuzzy as the noise faded away.

*

Marcus had been dragged out of the flat, his cast scraping along the ground, but the pain was worth it, as he'd managed to stuff his mobile phone into his cast, hidden out of sight for now. He could only watch as they loaded Kevin and Nico into the van, and the sight of Jo, barely conscious with his eye swollen shut had broken his heart, but he knew who he could call to fix this.

*

Stoffel got the strangest text, from Marcus, saying that he'd been arrested, which was strange in and of itself, and that he had a real, live Viking transported to the modern era from the past that he was trying to protect.

"Going for the insanity plea already," Stoffel muttered to himself, before grabbing his coat and heading straight for the police headquarters in Malmö.

*

Nico had no idea what was going on. Marcus and Jo weren't with them and he had no idea what was happening, he didn't understand Swedish, so he couldn't eavesdrop, and Kevin seemed to have shut down with the stress of it all. He held Kevin close and did the only thing that he could think of in a situation like this, which was to pray to a god that he didn't believe in, for a miracle that he was sure was impossible.

*

The police were starting to think that it was all wind up, the two that could speak Swedish just kept asking for a lawyer, which they were denied. And the other two were either putting on a good act, or genuinely didn't understand what they were saying in Swedish or English, and there were having a hard time finding anyone who spoke German at short notice.

But there was a way to find out. "Put them all in the same room, let's see who speaks then."

*

The room was small and windowless, the glare of the harsh fluorescent light flickering over them and making everything look gritty. Jo was pushed into the room and he stumbled onto his knees, his hands already grazed from being manhandled. He blinked so that his eyes could adjust to the light and that was when he realised that he wasn't alone.

He staggered over to the chair next to Marcus, using the table for support, he was relieved to see that Marcus was mostly unharmed, and he traced his fingers over Jo's bruised face. "I was trying to protect you," Jo said, and Marcus smiled as the tears fell down his face.

"You're an idiot."

"I'm your idiot." Jo leant in for a kiss, and despite his bruised lip, it was still comforting. But it didn't stop him worrying about Kevin and Nico. Not so much Nico, there would be a lot of media if anything happened to him, but Kevin… no-one knew that he existed.

Marcus drew him into a big hug, and he whispered, "Never give up, never surrender."

Jo gave him a funny look, but from the smile on Marcus' face, he had a plan.

The heavy door clunked open again and Nico was first to appear, followed by Kevin who was handcuffed to him. Jo placed his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his hand so that he could place his finger over his lips without looking suspicious, and he hoped that Nico would get the message. From the look of Kevin he was far too terrified to speak, and under the garish light he looked so pale that Jo was sure he could see the blood vessels beneath his skin.

Nico nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of his head, and he took Kevin's hand. Jo was sure that if anyone had told him that one day he'd end up locked in a room with Nico Hülkenberg, and an actual Viking transported through time to the modern day, he'd have laughed so hard that he pulled something, but now that he was here, he didn't really feel it was that funny.

Marcus was scratching at his cast, and Jo tried to get him to stop but he wouldn't. Jo held him tight, wondering if it was a reaction to the stress when he heard a little beep. Marcus had his phone, and he was accessing the internet.

Jo fought to keep the surprise off his face, and he held Marcus close so that the little cameras in the room couldn't see anything. He watched as Marcus accessed the university system, and started e-mailing everyone he could think of. Attached to the e-mail was his data on Kevin, and all the information that he had which could convince his colleagues and the press around the world that he had an actual Viking.

Marcus went back to scratching at his cast, and Jo made a pitiful effort to stop him, just for appearances. Now all they had to do was wait, and hope that someone came to their rescue.


	4. Forseti

Stoffel took a deep breath and explained, for the seventh time, why he was here, and asked, politely, if he could see his clients. He'd overheard a few bits, since they'd assumed that he didn't speak Swedish, and he was talking only in English so that they would jump to that conclusion.

Marcus and Jo were being held with an unidentified man, and Nico Hülkenberg, the Formula One driver. Which was interesting, and that could definitely be used as leverage to get access to Marcus and Jo.

Stoffel strode up to the man that appeared to be in charge, they were well-built with a bit of middle age spread and the years had taken their hair apart from a ring of grey around the ears. They had the most stripes on their uniform, and the way they were ordering people around said that it was a good bet that they were the boss.

"Hi, I'm Nico Hülkenberg's lawyer," Stoffel said, he took the man's hand and shook it to gain the element of surprise. "I'm representing him and his friends. I'd like to see my clients now."

The man's rage was barely concealed beneath the surface but Stoffel saw him force a smile, before leading him towards an office.

"Your client is being charged with harbouring an illegal alien."

"And that voids his right to a lawyer because…" Stoffel knew that he was being cheeky, but he also knew that there was something more going on than met the eye. Even if what Marcus had told him was clearly crazy, there was all the paperwork for their mystery man, and for the moment he was a legally allowed to stay in Europe while they worked out what had happened to him.

"Right then. He has all the correct paperwork as a citizen, I should know since I drafted it all. So there's no harbouring charges to be filed, as there was no-one being harboured. Same goes for Jolyon Carlyle Palmer and Marcus Thorbjörn Ericsson, so releasing them will save you quite a bit of paperwork."

"You think you're so clever."

"You don't get to be a professor of law without being clever." Stoffel smirked, it was game over, and the man knew it. "You can lead me to my clients now."

*

The police noticed a gathering of media outside the station, but they didn't think anything of it, not at first, the local crews often hung around hoping to catch a glimpse of something juicy. Then there was a few more, and they started to wonder what was going on, until one of them was brave enough to go out and ask them what they were here for, and the answer surprised even them.

"They said that they're here for the Viking?"

*

Stoffel wandered into the grim looking room, there wasn't a free chair but all of his clients were in the one place, which made things simple, although he wasn't impressed at the state of them. Jo was smiling, even though half of his face was black and blue, and Marcus looked like he needed to sleep for a week, although that was often his normal face.

Nico and Ketilløgh, looked undamaged, although they seemed to be suffering more emotionally.

"Is everyone okay?" Stoffel asked, even though they clearly weren't.

"Yeah." Jo leant back in his chair, and Stoffel wondered how he could be so calm after being raided at dawn on suspicion of harbouring an illegal immigrant. There was no sign of his crutch, so he was clearly dragged out, and now that he looked closely, Marcus' cast had scuff marks as though it had scraped along the ground.

Nico nodded and Ketilløgh looked up at Stoffel, which he took as a yes.

"It's all going to be okay, I'm going to get you out of here." Stoffel sounded confident, but he was working out how many charges of police brutality that he was going to have to file, along with getting to the bottom of the misunderstanding that had caused this.

There was a knock on the door and a young officer came in bearing the handcuff keys. He stared at Ketilløgh as he took the cuffs off, and Stoffel got a strange feeling in his stomach.

"So you're the one representing the Viking? The press are all asking for him," the officer said, and Stoffel compressed his lips, dismissing him with the tiniest nod of the head.

"Tell me everything," Stoffel said, and everyone looked at Marcus.

*

Marcus told Stoffel the whole story, trying to keep the technical details to a minimum for efficiency, and he was sure that he'd made things worse, but faced with the possibility that the police would do something awful to Kevin, it was the only way he could think of to keep him safe.

"Good thinking," Stoffel said, and there was a nod of appreciation. "But you're going to have to lay low for the next few weeks while the media storm blows over."

Stoffel scrolled through his phone and saw that the news of a real Viking had gone viral, there were several photos of the hordes of media that had gathered outside the police station.

The others all nodded, and Jo wondered what they were going to do, they was no way to get Kevin to Britain, and there wasn't space for all of them at Marcus' and he didn't exactly have a lot of friends who would take them in no questions asked.

Only the sound of the light flickering could be heard as Stoffel kept scrolling through his phone. The silence was eerie, and it was starting to feel like something out of a horror movie.

"I know where we can go. My parents. They'll be happy to have me home," Nico said, and even though Kevin didn't understand a word that he had said, he smiled, because Nico was smiling.

"Okay, make the call," Stoffel said, handing Nico the phone. "I'm going to get all the paperwork in order, and I think I can get us out of here discretely if we agree not to press charges for the police brutality."

"Deal." Jo slapped his hand on the table, and to his credit he didn't let the pain show on his face. "Let's get out of here."

It took Stoffel the rest of the day to make sure that they were all free people, even Kevin, although he'd not got an answer as to why he'd changed his name, but that didn't matter. The police were glad to be rid of them, and they were glad to be free.

When Stoffel reappeared he was carrying three crutches, and he had the biggest smile on his face. "You are all free, I have a passport for Kevin," Stoffel said, he saw Jo raise his eyebrow at that and he held it up, "A legal passport. He's now a full Danish citizen. I have Nico's car, suitcases in the boot, and I've made sure that your flat is boarded up."

"Nice. So what do we do now?" Jo said, as he reached out to hold Marcus' hand.

"We're going to sneak out the back."

***

Nico drove all night, as the others slept. He stopped a couple of times for coffee, but only once he'd got through Denmark and into Germany. Although there was more chance that he'd be recognised, hopefully they wouldn't know of the fuss back in Sweden.

Sneaking out hadn't been quite as exciting as Nico had imagined. They'd wandered out through the fire escape, into an alley that was sealed at one end, and got into the car. No running to escape the media, and no conspiracy to quietly get rid of them, which Nico had started to believe was a possibility as they got further away from the offices, and gone deeper into the building.

He'd put on a brave face for Kevin, and having him close by had made it easier, but he couldn't wrap his head around it all. Nico wanted to believe that it was some kind of hoax, Marcus wanting attention before releasing a book, but the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that it wasn't true.

The only logical answer that made sense, was that he had a Viking sleeping in the passenger seat of his car, sucking on his thumb since he couldn't hold Nico's hand. He looked so young and vulnerable, and yet if Nico remembered his history, that was probably far from true.

It was still dark when he pulled up outside his parents' house, and he realised that he maybe should have been clearer when he said that he was bringing a few friends, although his mum would be thrilled to have a few more people around for the holidays. She often lamented not having a bigger family, even if he and his sister did their best to make sure that she was thankful that she just had the two of them.

Nico woke Kevin, and he yawned before getting out of the car, latching on to Nico's hand as he led him into the house. He would worry about everything else later, but for now, he needed sleep.

*

Nico woke to find Kevin gone, and he bolted out of bed, rushing around the house to see where he had got to.

He checked in the spare room, to see Jo and Marcus sleeping, both bruised and damaged, but no Kevin. The bathroom was empty and he crept down the stairs to see that his mum was sitting with Kevin, showing him pictures of Nico as a child, which Kevin was looking at with fascination. Although Nico wasn't sure if it was because he was interested in Nico's past, or if he was marvelling at the wonders of photography, and without Marcus he wouldn't know.

It amazed Nico that even without a common language, his mum had found a way to communicate with Kevin. He was eating biscuits and drinking milk, and he had a smile on his face as he pointed at the pictures.

"Hej," Nico said, it was about the extent of his Danish, but he wanted to learn, he wanted to talk to Kevin, more than anything in the world. Kevin smiled, and Nico felt warm inside.

"Morning. I didn't hear you get in."

Before Nico could even get a word in his mum was rushing over for a hug, and after all the stress, he felt a tear run down his cheek. "It was early and I didn't want to wake you."

"I'll get you a cup of coffee and some cake, and then you can tell me everything." His mum gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he went to sit next to Kevin on the sofa, wrapping an arm around him.

Nico ignored the smile that his mum had on her face when she returned, he could see her mentally planning the wedding already, and he let the sweet, sticky chocolate cake work its magic before telling her everything.

She didn't look too surprised when he told her that he had proof that Kevin was a Viking transported through time, and he tried to tell her what Jo had said about time travel, but he couldn't remember it all.

"Jo can explain it when he wakes up, but it doesn't change the fact that he's here now, and we have to keep him safe."

"He'll be safe here sweetie, I'll make sure of it." She smiled, and Nico felt relaxed, like he could finally breathe.

His mum went to make another cup of coffee, and Nico reached for another slice of cake, offering a little bit to Kevin. Nico watched as he chewed slowly, unsure at first but then he took the fork, copying Nico's movements as he ate bite after bite until it was all gone, all apart from a smudge of icing on his lip.

Nico thought about leaning in to kiss it off, but he caught himself just in time, and he wiped it off with his thumb, hoping that Kevin wouldn't think he was strange. There was no way they could have a relationship, they didn't even speak each other's language, and their cultures were so very different, if people now didn't accept gay people, what were the odds that a Viking would?

Axel came bounding through, tail wagging as he came to see the visitor, his dad and sister must be back from walking him, and Kevin looked at him with confusion. "Hund?"

"Ja," Nico said, smile on his face as he realised that this was their first conversation, and he was glad that some words seemed universal.

Kevin petted the dog as he wagged his tail, happy for the attention, and he wondered if Kevin had any concept of pets, but the way he treated Axel, put his mind at ease.

There was the sound of the door creaking open, and his sister shoved him as she walked past, they weren't the hugging type, and she grinned when she saw the way that Nico looked at Kevin.

"Your boyfriend's cute," Stephanie said, and Nico blushed.

"He's not… It's not like that, he's just a friend who needed somewhere to stay over Christmas."

"Mum said he stayed in your room." Stephanie leant forward on the edge of her chair, eager for the gossip.

"We're just friends." Nico reached out for another slice of cake, he was going to need all the comfort that he could get, and Kevin waited for Nico to feed him little bites of it. Stephanie smirked as though she'd won the argument, although he was sure that mum wouldn't have told her the whole story, not yet.

The sound of crutches moving around upstairs caught Nico's attention, and Kevin listened carefully before wandering out of the room. Nico went to follow, but Stephanie was asking a lot of questions, and there was no polite way to extricate himself from the conversation.

*

Jo woke up and was disorientated, he couldn't remember where he was and it took him a moment to remember that he was at Nico's home. Yesterday had been such a long day that it felt like a week, and Jo was just glad that everyone was unharmed. Well, not seriously injured.

Marcus opened his eyes and Jo leant in for a kiss, it felt like their first kiss all over again, relief mixed with longing. Jo was so glad that Marcus was safe, he couldn't imagine his life without him.

He ran his fingers through Marcus' hair, the kiss getting softer and softer until Marcus said, "I need to pee."

"You say the most romantic things." Jo laughed and he reached out to get his crutch, before finding Marcus' and helping him to the bathroom.

The cast meant that Marcus couldn't get a shower or bath easily, so Jo was washing him with the flannel, which was surprisingly intimate considering that they'd been a couple for so many years. Jo cleaned Marcus' cock, and it twitched in anticipation. He couldn't remember the last time that they'd made love, sometime before Marcus' accident, and all the craziness that Kevin had brought into their lives, but Jo knew that it was time to change that.

"I think I should check that it's clean," Jo said with a smirk on his face, and he licked his lips before wrapping them around the tip of Marcus' cock. Marcus covered his mouth with his hand to muffle the moans and gasps as he took a moment to revel in the feeling of Jo's warm mouth wrapped around him.

Jo gave him a few sucks as he felt him harden with each flick of his tongue, before pulling off so that he could suck on his fingers, making sure that Marcus was watching as he trailed them round to his hole, circling at first while he got into a nice pace with his mouth, before pushing in.

He looked up to see Marcus with his eyes scrunched shut and his hand still covering his mouth as only whimpers could be heard as Jo played with his prostate, feeling him buck under his touch, balanced carefully against the wall.

Jo reached down to stroke himself as he took all of Marcus into his mouth, his nose nuzzling at the soft fuzzy hair that surrounded his cock. He knew it wouldn't take long to have him coming hard, and he slid a second finger inside him, aiming straight for that spot as he writhed in orgasm, Jo swallowing it all down as he gasped through his own climax.

He rested his head against Marcus' left thigh, kissing it as he withdrew his fingers, too dizzy to stand, and he looked up to see Marcus smiling, calm and satisfied.

There was no way for them to know that even though they had locked the door, someone had been watching them. Kevin was kneeling so that he could look through the key hole. He had been mesmerised by it all, seeing something that he'd never realised was a possibility, and now he wanted to try it for himself.

*

Jo hadn't quite managed to get the smirk off his face, but the smell of food had lured them down, and he was surprised to see all of Nico's family sitting around, as Kevin looked quite happy sitting next to the dog and cuddled into Nico.

Marcus sat down on the small sofa, and Jo slid in next to him, letting him rest his cast on his lap so that he could keep it elevated.

There was silence as Nico finished off a slice of cake, and then he flew into action introducing everyone, and Jo was relieved that Nico's family spoke English. It all seemed far more ordinary than Jo expected, and he was surprised to find out Nico had a sister, who teased him mercilessly about his 'boyfriend'.

Susanne and Dieter were lovely, and Nico's mum kept trying to feed them all, which made Marcus very happy. Not that Jo didn't try his best to cook for him, but lately, with all the hospital food, having fresh home-baked goods was the best Christmas gift that Marcus could ever ask for.

Nico told the story of what happened, and Jo felt strangely distant hearing it all from someone else's perspective, although a little distance wasn't a bad thing.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Susanne asked, and Nico sipped at his coffee while he thought about his answer.

"We're going to hide out here for the holidays, and then…" Nico looked at Jo and Marcus for answers, and Jo looked at Marcus, this was his field, although he didn't usually deal with the living.

"We're going to take Kevin back to Denmark, get him enrolled in college, and once he's settled, I'll reveal my findings to the world and once they've seen the data the fuss will die down and the media will move on to the next story." Marcus sounded weary by the time he'd finished speaking, and Jo leant over to get another slice of cake for him, at this rate it would be all gone before they had finished their coffee.

"Will he be safe there?"

Nico smiled, and Marcus could see that she'd already taken Kevin in as her own, she was in full mum mode, which made Nico look proud.

Kevin looked confused, and Marcus told him everything, but he didn't expect his response.

"I want to stay with Nico."

"He wants to stay with you," Marcus said, and Nico looked conflicted, his job wasn't exactly stable.

"I can't teach him anything." Nico looked down at Kevin batting his eyelashes, bright blue eyes staring into his soul and he knew that he didn't want to say no, but that it wasn't about what he wanted, it had to be about what was best for Kevin. Which meant school, stability and a life out of the spotlight.

"When do you go back to work?" Jo asked, as Nico's family all looked at Nico for an answer.

"I have to go into the factory for a few days here and there, but testing's not until March." Nico was trying not to look at Kevin, even though he didn't understand what they were saying, it still felt wrong talking about his future without him being a part of the conversation.

Marcus looked at Jo, and they had a silent conversation of smiles and nods before Marcus said, "We could work with that."

"You can come back with us, fly from Copenhagen across to the factory when you need to," Jo said, "We can see how it goes from there."

"Is Kevin okay with that?" Susanne asked, and Marcus repeated everything for him. They didn't need the answer translated, as Kevin's smile said it all.

Nico held him close, and for a brief moment, it seemed like everything was going to work out just fine.

*

Kevin seemed to come out of his shell with everyone around, and even though it had been hard to keep everyone included in the conversation, it had all worked out fine, with smiles and laughter all around.

That night Nico had held Kevin tight as he dozen, he stroked his hair, and Kevin pressed their bodies close together. So close, that he could feel Kevin's erection pressing into his hip, and Nico didn't know what to think about that.

Nico tried to move so that he could give Kevin some space, but he only snuggled in closer, gripping his hand tight and wriggling until his face was right next to Nico's. He stroked the side of Kevin's face, and his eyes opened. Before he could think about it, Kevin's lips were on his, soft and tender. Nico knew that he shouldn't kiss him back, that he was in a vulnerable state, but he couldn't help himself, it all felt so right.

They kissed until Kevin was sleepy again, and he drifted off with a smile on his face. Nico on the other hand, as nice as it had been, felt guilty and he didn't know who to talk to.

Nico tiptoed through to the spare room, knocking quietly before slipping in, much to the displeasure of Jo and Marcus who were clearly hoping for a little alone time.

He sat down on the bed, tactfully not looking at the small tent in the duvet as Jo pulled the blanket up to cover his hairy chest.

"Kevin kissed me," Nico blurted out, and Jo tried to hug him without poking him with his erection. "Please tell me that he's over the age of consent."

"He's at least twenty-one," Marcus said, and Nico leant in closer, crossing his legs as he waited for Marcus to tell him more. "But probably not twenty-five yet."

"How can you tell?" Nico asked. Marcus told him a lot of technical things, and Nico nodded before saying, "What does that mean?"

Marcus rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands. "It's science. Science says he's twenty-one to twenty-five years old."

Nico breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short lived.

"He's still vulnerable," Jo said, "It's not really the time to be thinking about relationships."

"I know," Nico said, and a tears started to well up. Jo and Marcus held him while he cried, and tried to reassure him, even though he had no idea what the right thing to do or say was. It wasn't just the lack of a shared language, or the age difference, or even the strange circumstances that had brought Kevin to the future, but the culture shock.

Even with all of Marcus' study of that period in history, he wasn't sure exactly what their culture was like, since most of the accounts were written hundreds of years later, and by the Christians that had destroyed their culture. It was still a bit of a guessing game, which meant that there was no knowing how Kevin would react to things.

"He just needs some time to get his bearings, adjust to the world." Marcus gave Nico a kiss on the cheek before getting comfy, and he was snoring before Nico could even think about making a move.

Jo rolled his eyes, which lost some of its effect due to the bruising, but the swelling had definitely reduced a lot, and the harsh purple-red colour was making way to more muted blacks and browns.

"He could sleep through the apocalypse," Jo said, without apology.

"How did you two meet?" Nico asked. For all that Jo and Marcus had done for him, and Kevin, he hadn't really asked about them. Jo was clearly British, but that was all he knew, and he'd looked up about his dad's career, but there wasn't a lot there.

"I was carrying a big stack of paper, my dissertation on its way to get bound, back in the day when everything had to be printed out." Jo was miming his way through it, and Nico found himself smiling at this little glimpse of normal life. "So, one of the swing doors moved fast, far faster that I could dodge it with the crutch, and it sent me flying in a flurry of paper."

Nico laughed, even though he knew it was rude, but Jo only smiled more, and Nico felt himself relax.

"I hit my head, as the remains of all my hard work lay scattered around me, and then this perfect angel appeared, helping me to my feet and gathering up the wayward paper." Jo stroked Marcus' hair as he stirred in his sleep, but he showed no sign of waking up. "He sat by me while I sorted it all back into order, making me laugh, and once it was handed in, we went for a coffee. The rest, as they say, is history. It was the first of many dates, and once we both graduated, we moved in together, supported each other as we studied for our PhDs."

"That's so sweet." Nico wondered, if he and Kevin were a couple, how strange the story of how they met would be. And with that Nico was back to all the destructive thoughts. "Night."

"Night."

Nico slunk down to the living room, and made himself comfy on the sofa. Axel curled up next to him, and he dreamt of Kevin, even though it brought him nothing but frustration and confusion, but he knew that no matter what it took, he would find a way to have Kevin in his life.


	5. Kvasir

The sound of Axel howling woke everyone with a jolt, and Nico woke with a start, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth. He petted Axel until he calmed down, and that was when Nico heard what was upsetting him. There were people knocking at the door, and if the sound was anything to go by, there were quite a few people out there.

Nico wasn't wearing enough clothes to answer the door, and there was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, his mum, wrapped up in her dressing gown.

She peered in to see Nico there, and pressed her finger to her lips before shutting the door. Nico was sure that she'd told everyone else to lay low too.

There was the sound of a rabble the second that the front door clicked opened, and he heard his mum calling for order, which worked much more effectively than Nico thought it would. He would have to remember that for the next time the media were swarming him.

Nico couldn't quite hear what the reporters were saying, but he could hear his mum's voice loud and clear.

"Nicolas isn't here."

"Yes, that is his car, he uses it when he's home. But he's got two in Monaco. He's even got a Porsche now."

Nico stifled a laugh, his mum was going to bore the media into going away. After telling them all about how he hated his glasses as a child, and that he used to work as a stores clerk for his dad, which she'd have much preferred to him having such a dangerous job that took him away from home; she told them all politely to leave, and from the sound of it, they did.

She reappeared with two cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits which Nico took control of.

"I'm so sorry, this is all my fault." Nico gave his mum a hug, and he felt like he was a kid again, needing his parents to stick up for him.

"It's not your fault honey, you did this to protect a friend. That's a very noble thing." She brushed his hair out of his eyes and he reached out for another biscuit, munching on it thoughtfully as he nodded.

"Do you really wish that I'd gone to work for dad?" Nico asked, not sure if he wanted an answer, but his curiosity was piqued.

"Are you happy with your life? With your job?"

"Yes." Nico wasn't sure if he was happy right now, everything was so complicated. But his life as a whole, he was content with what he had.

"Then I'm proud of you. That's all I want for you and your sister, for you to be happy."

*

Nico had finished his coffee, and then wandered back to his own bed where Kevin was sleeping peacefully. He curled in next to him, the sofa hadn't been very comfy and his thoughts had kept him awake for half the night.

When he woke, Kevin was gone, and Nico wandered down to see Kevin helping his mum in the kitchen.

Nico gave Kevin a kiss on the cheek, which made his mum smile, and he went back to chopping carrots.

"I'm not sure the kitchen is the safest place for him," Nico whispered, although he was sure that Kevin didn't understand German, but it felt strange talking about him while he was standing there.

"If he could manage a battle sword, then he can chop a few vegetables." His mum went back to stirring something, and the smell of turkey was getting stronger. How could he have forgotten that it was Christmas Eve? December seemed to have disappeared without a trace, eaten up by hospitals and police stations, which were more eerily alike than Nico had ever realised.

Nico helped his mum cook, Kevin glancing over at him while he worked, and it all felt nice. So much so that Nico forgot all about the craziness that had brought them here, and he started to feel like they were a couple.

"You could have told us that you were gay," she said, and Nico froze, was he going to tell her the whole truth, after all these years of skirting around it.

"I'm bi." Nico kept his eyes down, he couldn't bear to see the look on his mum's face.

"You could have told us that you were bi," she said, and he looked up to see his mum smiling.

"I know." Nico let out a little laugh, the relief evident and his mum came round to hug him. He felt like a weight had been lifted from his soul, and he wondered why he'd waited so long to tell them.

He could never have imagined just bringing a boyfriend home, telling his parents that he was bi, but now that it had happened, he was glad that everything had worked out.

And then he realised that one kiss didn't mean they were dating. Which shattered his nice little domestic bubble, and set him worrying about how he was going to make it all work, when he couldn't even talk to him about their relationship. He was sure that Marcus wouldn't want to help, since him and Jo had said that they didn't think it was a good idea.

_Nico, you are the master of complicated relationships._

*

Alcohol hadn't been the best of ideas, as Nico was now laughing hysterically at how surreal it all was. Marcus and Kevin were chatting and Jo was talking away to his sister about the complexities of time travel. His parents were handing out the gifts and the thought of a Viking celebrating Christmas had been so jarring that he'd laughed until he thought he was going to black out.

Nico coughed a few times and his mum ruffled his hair before shaking her head, waiting for him to open his gift.

"How did you explain all this to Kevin?" Nico asked Marcus, curious as to how he could make sense of this, compared to all the horrors that he'd seen at the museum.

"I told him that we were celebrating the winter solstice." Marcus shrugged. "Since there's nothing religious around."

"We're a family of heathens," Nico's dad said, and they all laughed. Nico was so glad that he'd made it home for the holidays, it was what he needed, some time to relax, to be himself.

Susanne offered Kevin a small wrapped gift, which he looked at until Marcus told him that it had to be unwrapped. He tore at the paper, and he rattled the box chocolates as he tried to work out what it was.

"It's food," Marcus said, and Kevin tried to bite at the box as Nico grimaced. He reached out to take Kevin's hand, before taking the lid off and revealing all the tiny chocolates inside. Just the smell of them was divine, and Nico was glad none of them were foil wrapped.

Kevin sniffed at them, but he still looked unsure, and Nico took one out, biting it in half so that Kevin could see that it was edible. He didn't look convinced at first, but the more that he chewed, the happier he looked with it.

Nico let out another laugh, it was so surreal, and yet it was perfect. He couldn't have imagined a more wonderful Christmas.

*

That night as Kevin curled up in his arms with chocolate on his breath, soft lips seeking out more as Nico stopped worrying about it all, he would take life as it came, because right now all he wanted was Kevin and the breathless moans escaping his lips.

***

Jo woke on Christmas day to the sound of someone working away in the kitchen, and he realised that his mum and dad would be doing the same thing right now, preparing food for lots of people. They weren't expecting him, ever since Marcus' accident he wasn't able to fly home like they'd planned, and it was going to be a lot of travelling by train and bus, which with a cast would have been a nightmare, so they'd decided that they would stay at home, save Marcus the stress. And then Kevin happened.

He still felt guilty about accusing Marcus of being crazy, but it had taken a while to get his head round the idea that Kevin was a real life Viking.

Jo had no idea how he would explain it all to his parents, so he took a deep breath and hit the call button, there was no point worrying about it for any longer than he had to.

"Hi sweetie," his mum's voice was calming, and he realised that he hadn't really spoken to them since he'd called about Marcus. There'd been lots of texts and messages, but there was something about actually hearing their voices that was reassuring.

"Hi." Jo wished that there was a cord attached to the phone, just so that he would have something to fidget with while he blurted out everything that had happened.

"A Viking?"

That was all the response that he got from his mum, and it was somehow anticlimactic. He'd imagined more questions, but even the media seemed to have got bored with it. "Yes."

"Marcus must be happy with that." There was the sound of someone in the background, one of his sisters but he couldn't tell which from just a few mumbled words.

Jo laughed, for all the chaos Marcus was still smiling. "Yes, he's loving it all."

"Your sisters are here. I'm going to hand the phone over, I've got a turkey to cook."

"I love you, mum." Jo never realised how much he missed his family until times like this, when he just wanted a little longer with them.

"I love you too sweetie."

Jo chatted away to his family until Marcus woke up, they all said hi to him, and he told him all about _his_ Viking until Nico's mum called to say that breakfast was ready.

That was how the rest of their holiday went, Nico's family treating them like they were family, and it made Jo feel less homesick, although he would never feel alone, not as long as he had Marcus.

*

Nico enjoyed being home, and he was surprised how quickly the time flew. Kevin seemed happy with kisses, for now, and that suited him, he didn't want to rush things, not while they still couldn't understand each other.

He was going to drive everyone back to Sweden, let Kevin get settled and then fly out to the factory.

At least he would have Marcus and Jo around when he wasn't, although they hadn't spent a night apart since… since Kevin came through to this time. Nico was going to miss that, but taking him across to Britain and leaving him alone while he was working wasn't fair on Kevin.

So he was going to have to make the most of their last day together.

***

"I'll be back tomorrow," Nico said, and Marcus translated it for Kevin, but he could already see the pain in his eyes. Kevin held his hand, shaking his head. "Marcus will look after you."

Jo took Kevin's hand, stroking the side of it with his thumb, the same way that he did with Marcus when he was nervous. "It's going to be okay," Jo said, and even though Kevin didn't understand him, there was something about the way that Jo spoke that was reassuring.

Kevin nodded before giving Nico a kiss on the cheek, and Nico had to bite his lip so that he could make it out of the flat without crying.

*

Jo spent the day tidying up from where the police had left a trail of destruction, and he checked the temporary door that Stoffel had got someone to put up. It seemed sturdy enough, and it would give them time to get a replacement.

He looked at the shattered photo frame, Marcus and his family, and he poured the broken glass into the box he was using to collect it all, which was getting quite full between all the smashed cups and the glass coffee table that was no more.

Marcus and Kevin were sitting on the sofa playing video games, and for someone who thought that the people on the screen were trapped in the tv at first, Kevin seemed to have adjusted easily to the fact that there was new technology, even if Jo was sure that Marcus had told him that it was magic. Although to Marcus, who couldn't really fix any of them, or even understand more than the basics of how they worked, Jo could probably say the same thing to him.

With the place looking half decent again, Jo made himself a well-earned cup of tea, sitting down on the sofa to join in the game, and he almost laughed when he saw what it was. _Vikings: Battle for Asgard_ , although sharing a house with Marcus that wasn't a surprise, but the fact that he thought Kevin would enjoy it said a lot.

Since Marcus could work from home, it was decided that he would stay with Kevin while he had the cast on, and there was very little that he needed to go into the lab for. Jo was sure that he could balance his classes and supervising duties so that there was someone to watch Kevin at all times. For as much as he seemed to have settled into life in the future, there was no knowing if he would be able to handle it all with such ease.

*

Nico was sitting in the factory, his engineer hovering as he tapped away at his phone.

"Met a cute Danish girl?" Brad raised an eyebrow, and Nico closed the app before shoving his phone in his pocket.

Nico had forgotten that not everyone would be as accepting as his parents, and although it had been nice to have a couple of weeks off and not worry about it all, it had meant that coming back to reality had hit him like a wet fish in the face.

He was sure that the people he knew probably wouldn't care if he was dating a guy, or if he was bi, but every time that he opened his mouth to say something, nothing came out. As much as he wanted everything to be out in the open, he just couldn't deal with the idea that people he knew would change their opinion of him just because of who he dated.

It made for a strange working environment, although at least the news of his 'arrest' seemed not to have made it as far as the British press.

By the end of the day, Nico was exhausted, and he wondered why things had changed now. He'd known that he was bi since high school, and he'd had a few flings with guys over the years, to the point that there were rooms in the Force India factory that still made him smile every time he walked past them.

Although that was a long time ago, and Paul had a wife and child now, their brief and casual relationship something that they never talked about, all that was left was a close friendship and a few knowing looks, which suited Nico. He wasn't one to brag about his conquests.

When he checked into the little hotel room, the first thing that he wanted to do was call Kevin, but unless he wanted Marcus to translate it all, there wasn't much to be said, so he headed to the gym, hoping it would tire him out so that he could sleep, and wake up knowing that he was going home to Kevin.

***

Jo had been trying to teach Kevin little bits of English, although from the way that he looked at them when they spoke, he understood a lot more now. It was probably only a matter of time before he was able to string together a sentence, and Jo had a bet with Marcus as to what his first sentence would be.

The tension was building as it got closer to the time that Nico's flight was due in. Jo had found a website that tracked flights and Kevin watched the screen as he got closer and closer to Copenhagen.

By the time Nico wandered through the door, suitcase trailing behind him, Kevin was so excited to see him that he almost knocked him over with the force of his hug.

"I love you," Kevin said, his accent softer in English and it emphasised the breathless quality, as he waited for Nico to say something.

"I love you too."

There was a flurry of kisses as Nico carried Kevin to the bedroom, aware that there were others around, but it didn't stop them making out nosily, and he wondered how amazing Kevin would sound when they made love, which ended when the pain of his hard cock pressing against the zip of his jeans roused him out of his thoughts.

*

Jo tried not to listen to it all, and failed.

"We should talk to Kevin about…" Jo tried to think of a way to phrase it tactfully and failed. "Sex, safe sex."

Marcus nodded, the use of 'we' was generous, since Jo didn't really speak Danish, so it would be Marcus that had to have the conversation with Kevin. But it had to be done, as much as he liked Nico, Kevin would have to learn about these things so that he could take care of himself.

"I'll do it, when I get a chance."

***

"My name is Kevin."

Jo was beaming with pride, after just a few weeks, Kevin was starting to pick up more and more words and the sentences were getting increasingly complex.

"How are you today?" Jo asked, speaking slower than usual so that Kevin could hear each syllable.

"I'm good." Kevin looked at Jo with curiosity, and it wasn't until Jo smiled, nodding his encouragement, that Kevin smiled.

"You're getting good at this."

"Thank you." Kevin gave Jo a hug, squeezing him tight and he felt like he had another little brother, someone to look out for, take care of.

It was going to be a while before he was fluent, but Kevin seemed to be a quick learner, and Jo had no doubt that he'd be able to speak enough English before Nico started racing for the year.

Jo was relieved at that, because the thought of sending Kevin off into the world without being able to fully talk to his boyfriend, and he was sure that was how he thought of Nico, was a worrying one. But he couldn't imagine Kevin staying with them while Nico flew around the world.

The click of the front door opening stopped all conversation, and Kevin ran to the door like a puppy going to greet his master.

"How was your day?" Kevin asked, and Nico stood frozen as he took in what Kevin had just said, in English.

"It was good. I missed you," Nico said, leaning in for a kiss, and Jo added the phrase 'I miss you' to the list of things to learn next time. Although Kevin needed no translation of the feelings, Nico was making it very clear how much he missed Kevin using his tongue.

Jo thought about coughing, but it was Kevin's home too, so he grabbed his crutch and headed for the kitchen, Nico would no doubt want a coffee after his long journey and Jo wouldn't say no to another cup of tea. Marcus was where he had been all afternoon, on the sofa, leg balanced on the coffee table, with his headphones on playing video games.

By the time Jo returned to the living room, two cups awkwardly balanced, Nico and Kevin were sitting on the sofa, having joined Marcus in the game. Jo went to find the coursework that he had to mark, and wondered how to politely hint that it was Nico's turn to cook.

In the end pizza arrived, and that was an efficient solution.

***

Jo woke up to find the flat quiet, and there was no sign of Nico and Kevin.

"They must have gone out for a walk." Jo saw the smile on Marcus' face at the thought of having the flat all to themselves. Not that having guests had hampered their sex life, but there was something about having to be quiet that was different, changed the atmosphere. Not that Jo wouldn't gladly take every second that he got with Marcus, no matter what the circumstances.

Jo wasted no time in straddling the bed, leaving the cover draped over Marcus' cast so that it wouldn't catch him. The kisses were slow at first, but they got more passionate, more forceful as Marcus tried to arch his body against Jo's, and he knew that he would have to hurry to open himself up if he wanted more than a few thrusts before Marcus was done.

He got Marcus to lick his fingers, which slowed things down as he waited for the good bits. Marcus reached to get the lube, impatient as always as Jo fingered himself open, his long fingers not even close to how good Marcus was going to feel inside him.

"I love you."

"I love you too. Now fuck me senseless." Marcus smiled, it was the most beautiful sight in the world and Jo just wanted to soak it all in, but the little whimpers were so arousing. Jo wanted to hear all the noises that Marcus could make, and with that he lubed up his cock, before sinking down onto it.

Marcus pressed his head back into the pillow, his mouth open as Jo slowly impaled himself on his glorious cock. Jo had his eyes screwed shut and he couldn't believe how long it had been since they did this. Marcus felt huge, so thick and long and it felt like eternity before their bodies were pressed together and he took a deep breath as he adjusted to the stretch of it all.

Jo's eyes flew open as Marcus stroked the side of his face, looking at him with nothing but love and affection. He ducked down for a kiss, forcing Marcus' cock against that spot as he let out a whimper, the combination of Marcus' tongue filling his mouth as his cock filled his arse made him feel loved, just knowing that he could give his body and soul over to Marcus felt so good.

He thrust his hips and Marcus cried out, so loud in the quiet flat and Jo flashed his grin, he was going to have fun. Jo angled himself so that he could kiss Marcus and ride him, even with their lips locked he was still so loud and each moan and gasp had him trembling with anticipation.

Jo was gasping as he felt his muscles tense, he wanted to draw this out. The sweat was dripping down his body and he rested his forehead against Marcus' he wanted to see how beautiful he looked when he came.

He led Marcus' hand to his cock, wrapping his hand over it as they stroked away in tandem, the feeling of his big hand surrounding him, so warm and firm, had him coming hard, his muscles clenching around him and that was all it took to have Marcus screaming in orgasm as Jo flopped down on top of him, their chests heaving and big smiles shining out.

"You feel so good." Marcus kissed at the side of his neck, it was all he could reach and it was going to be a while before Jo could move, since he was still a puddle of limbs, purring with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

"I love your cock," Jo said, propping himself up on one elbow so that he could stare into Marcus' eyes. He brushed his hair off his forehead, and placed a tender kiss on each cheek, enjoying the view, knowing that he was responsible for the blissed out look on Marcus' face.

"I love you," Marcus whispered, stroking Jo's back as he withdrew. Even half hard Jo still hissed at the loss, he would have gladly stayed joined for the rest of the day, no matter how messy it was. "But I need to pee."

Jo laughed, and he found the energy to roll off Marcus, admiring him as he made his way out, careful to keep his cast away from his cock, and the focus showed on his face.

With the sound of the crutches as Marcus walked, neither of them heard Kevin scurry back to his room from where he'd been watching them make love.

*

Nico wandered in, alone, in the evening and Jo looked at him with confusion.

"I thought Kevin was with you?" Jo asked, and he immediately went into alert, eyes darting around, even though Kevin clearly wasn't in the living room.

"No, I got a call early this morning asking if I could come in to the factory today." Nico headed straight for their bedroom. "I did leave a note."

Kevin was sitting on the bed, study guides lying out and his headphones on. Jo felt a stab of guilt, they'd not even realised he was home, but hopefully he didn't hear their 'exercise' earlier in the day.

Nico went to talk to Kevin, and Jo couldn't quite place the look on Kevin's face. Had he heard them? Jo blushed and went to make dinner, he wasn't sure if Kevin had eaten at all today, and he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

*

Kevin took his headphones off. Nico got a quick kiss before Kevin went and closed the door, smirk on his face as he bit his lip, and Nico was still trying to work out what the look meant when Kevin leapt at him, kissing him passionately as his hands tried to force their way inside Nico's jeans.

Nico was already half hard, and with Kevin's body pressed against him he was sure that he could come just from a few strokes. But they should really talk about it all first, and neither of them knew enough of each other's languages to have an in-depth conversation about it, so as frustrating as it was, Nico had to be the responsible one.

"Nej." Nico cursed the fact that he couldn't explain himself, that 'no' was all he could manage in Danish. He had some other phrases, but nothing that could explain that he wanted to take it slower, or that they should talk about condoms first.

There was confusion written all over Kevin's face and Nico went in for a hug, but he shied away from his touch before slinking out of the room, leaving Nico with a bulge in his trousers and no way of hiding it.


	6. Sjöfn

Marcus was sitting on the sofa as the sound of Jo clattering around in the kitchen echoed around the flat.

"What's wrong?" Marcus asked, he paused his video game and shuffled as much as he could so that he could look at Kevin.

"Nico, he doesn't want me." Kevin was confused, he'd thought that Nico loved him the way that Marcus and Jo loved each other.

"That's not true, he loves you," Marcus said, and he rested his hand on Kevin's arm.

"He doesn't want to consummate our relationship."

Marcus stared at him with his mouth open, before nodding. "Maybe he just wants to wait until you know each other better."

It was Kevin's turn to nod, but he felt it deep down in his soul that they were meant for something more.

"Sex is very different now."

"I know, I saw you and Jo together."

Marcus' eyes went wide but Kevin didn't know why, he couldn't figure out what he'd said that was wrong. "Jo, can you come here?" Marcus said, Kevin didn't understand it all, but he could hear the tone of voice and he didn't like it.

Jo appeared, and the look on Marcus' face was worrying. "What's happened?"

"Kevin's been watching us have sex."

"Oh." Jo to his credit kept all the anger off his face, he knew that this was going to happen, that Kevin was going to want more from his relationship with Nico but not have enough information to make an informed decision. "I'll talk, you translate," Jo said, and Marcus nodded, glad that someone was practical enough to discuss it all without feeling strange about the fact that Kevin had probably watched them have sex today.

It took a while to explain consent, and Kevin looked at them strangely for having to explain it at all. Although the use of the word 'slave' had left Jo feeling uneasy, and he'd had to tell Kevin that there were no such thing as slaves any more, that everyone was equal now, although that was a long way from true, he needed Kevin to realise that he needed consent from everyone, not just those he saw as equals.

That terrifying conversational detour dealt with, Jo then had to explain STDs, and he saw the look of horror on Kevin's face at that, but he looked happier when they got round to condoms, and he'd told Kevin that he and Nico would show him how to put them on. Which meant that Jo would have to have at least one more embarrassing conversation before he slept tonight.

Thankfully it was a much shorter conversation, and Nico looked relieved at the information. Until Jo said, "You're going to have to learn enough Danish to talk about these things."

Nico went to be wondering how he was going to explain it all to Kevin, would he even want to sleep in the same bed as him after their misunderstanding? But as bed time approached, Kevin slid into bed, cuddling in next to him. There was a goodnight kiss, and Nico saw a smile on Kevin's face, so that was enough for now.

***

Marcus was excited, even though he was back at the hospital it wasn't for anything bad, he was going to be finally free of his cast, and he couldn't wait. Jo was holding his hand, and Marcus was grinning.

"I'm so glad that I'm going to be free of the crutches," Marcus said, "One of us needs to be able to carry the coffee without spilling it."

Jo laughed, he'd learned to live with his crutch, although he could go short distances without it, everything else was easier with it. "I would love you, even if you spilled my tea."

The doctor gave them a funny look as she started to cut the cast free, and Jo held Marcus' hand until it was all gone, revealing skin that looked more like scales.

"I am going to spend a week in the bath."

"Sounds like a plan."

The next few hours were spent checking that it had all healed and that he had full mobility, which thankfully it appeared that he had. And although he was walking slowly when he left the hospital, he was walking unaided.

***

Two months of planning had led Marcus here, to the main lecture hall of the University, the one that was used for big events. Tonight it was going to be filled with reporters, all here to talk about Kevin, and hear about what times were like back in the Viking era. Marcus was technically unveiling his research at the same time, but given that most of the reporters were from non-scientific publications, he knew that he would get very little time to speak of that.

Kevin wasn't going to be there, the story that had been put to the press was that he needed to be in a care facility while he came to terms with it all, and that would continue in perpetuity so that Kevin could lead a normal life. Well, as close to a normal life as was possible with dating a Formula One driver.

At least Kevin's legal name and his Viking name were different, and although he'd been mad when Nico had decided to name him Kevin rather than learn how to pronounce his name, it looked like it was going to be useful.

To the press, the Viking known only as 'Ketilløgh' had no relation to Kevin Magnussen, although it wouldn't take them long to find out if they really wanted to. And Marcus was worried that being in the spotlight with Nico, would bring it all out.

Marcus shook his head, he was going to have to put all that aside for one night, since he had data to present, and a handpicked list of questions that he'd got Ketilløgh to answer for the press.

"Are you all ready for this?" Jo asked, traversing the stairs up to the stage.

"Yes. I've been waiting my whole life to find out more about the Viking age, and now I have my chance."

"I'm so proud of you." Jo leant in for a kiss, even though they avoided public displays of affection at work. Everyone knew about their relationship, and no-one seemed to care, the students least of all. "I'll be sitting in the front row, cheering you on."

It was a resounding success and Marcus left the lecture smiling, so happy that he could make a difference to his field. Jo had never been more proud of him, and at times like this, he was grateful that he had Marcus in his life.

*

Jo and Marcus had got home to find Nico speaking Danish, slowly, as Kevin listened to every word with fascination.

It was so nice to see them learning each other's language, and it made Jo feel better about the fact that winter testing was only a few days away. They were leaving tomorrow, first they were all going to head to Monaco to get Kevin settled in, and then on to winter testing, so that afterwards, when it was just the two of them, Kevin could return to Monaco and it would all be familiar.

Then it would just be him and Nico, and Jo really hoped that they could make it work. He was going to have to figure out a tactful way to say 'if it doesn't work out we'll come and get him'.

But Jo wanted them to work, for no reason other than it made both of them happy, and from what he'd seen of Nico, he could do with that every bit as much as Kevin could.

Marcus had made sure that Kevin had all the study materials for his course, although it was a distance learning course, so he could do it from anywhere in the world, which had been the point. This had always been the end goal, Kevin going to live with Nico, and Jo had prayed to a god, any god would suffice, that it would all work out.

***

The next morning everyone was up early, their flight was at nine and they had to get there, and check in. Jo was increasingly worried about how Kevin would handle it all. He'd never been on public transport, or seen an airplane on anything other than tv.

Getting to the airport had been fine, the train was relatively quiet so Nico could sit next to him the whole way and point to things as they went past.

"You're Danish is getting good," Marcus said, and Nico smiled. Jo knew he was trying to learn, but he'd clearly put in a lot of effort to get so proficient in such a short space of time.

"Tak," Nico said, and Jo smiled, it was nice to see everyone so relaxed. He was going to miss having them around.

*

The airport wasn't too busy, and Jo breathed a sigh of relief, they made it through security using 'magic' as an explanation for most things, but mainly so they didn't terrify Kevin by telling him what all the security was there to prevent.

Jo had been surprised by how little possessions Kevin had, they'd gone out and got him clothes, and he had a few books for his studies, but that was it.

Nico had sworn to look out for him and provide for him. And from the way he was holding Kevin's hand, gazing lovingly into his eyes, Jo was sure that he'd keep his promise.

*

Jo was verging on a full blown anxiety attack, when he saw Kevin let out a yawn. Marcus had managed to explain it all by describing it as a train that flies, which it kind of was, if you ignored all the technical aspects of it.

Marcus held Jo's hand tight as they prepared for take-off, he wasn't a good flyer at the best of time and worrying about how Kevin would cope with it all was verging his heart rate into rabbit territory. Jo wished that he'd got a drink before they took off, but given the time in the morning, and the fact that he was a lightweight when it came to alcohol, it was probably best that he hadn't.

Once they were off the ground, Kevin cuddled into Nico, so happy to be next to him, and slept for the entire journey.

Jo breathed a sigh of relief, before doing the same, the exhaustion of flying catching up with him, and he woke up in Nice, with Marcus still holding his hand.

*

Nico had asked a friend to pick them up, but in hindsight a taxi might have been easier, since now he was going to have to explain to Paul what was going on. He didn't want to hide his relationship, but at the same time he wasn't sure if Kevin would want everyone to know, or understood the repercussions to being open with his sexuality.

Paul had raised an eyebrow when he saw Kevin clinging to Nico's hand, their fingers interlaced and it didn't take a genius to see the way that they looked at each other was nothing short of true love.

There were brief introductions as Paul bundled them all into the car, moving the baby seat so that Marcus could slide in next to Nico. Kevin showed no sign of letting go of Nico, and he stayed quiet for the entire journey.

Jo chatted away about work, and asked a lot of questions about the DTM season, although it was just to cover the silence and make people feel less awkward.

Paul helped carry the bags in, and showed no sign of being in any rush to leave. Nico went to make drinks, their early start had been a shock to all of them, but now it was nearly lunch time, and a nap wasn't worth it.

"So, how did you two meet?" Paul asked, once he had a cup of tea in his hands. Jo and Marcus looked at Nico, and Kevin was processing what Paul had asked.

"I ran him over with my car," Nico said, shaking his head, it was still so crazy, and he was glad that Kevin hadn't suffered any long term injuries as a result of it.

"Oh." Paul stared at his hand, and Nico felt the guilt and pain of the accident resurface. He wasn't sure that Kevin even knew what had happened, Marcus had talked to him about it, but Nico had no idea what he'd been told.

"Does Kevin know what happened?" Nico asked Marcus, and Jo was wondering the same thing. When Kevin had first come out of the coma he was so disorientated that he wouldn't have told him about the accident, but then he'd recovered, and become close to Nico.

"Yes, in broad strokes."

The frown lines faded from Nico's forehead and the tension in the air wafted out on the warm sea breeze. After months in Malmö, it felt pleasingly warm and Nico had he urge to lie out in the sun. He stretched back, lounging on the sofa as Kevin lay next to him, curling around him so that there was as much contact as possible.

"I sat by his bed while he recovered," Nico said, and Kevin smiled at him, even though he didn't know what they were saying.

"And are you his brother?" Paul asked Marcus, and he laughed, shaking his head as he gradually got control of himself.

"No, I was attacked by a Viking ship and ended up in the bed next to him in hospital." Marcus subconsciously rubbed his leg, the scars may have faded but he still hadn't forgotten about it. "I'm a professor of history, the Viking age is my speciality. I was on an archaeological dig when the crane that was lifting out the Viking ship tipped over and sent the remains flying. Luckily I was the only one hurt."

Jo held Marcus' hand tight, it was so typical of him to think of others rather than himself, although Jo had seen first-hand how many people were around on a dig, and the situation could have been a lot worse. Although he'd have much preferred that no-one was injured, but at least Marcus had recovered. That was the most important thing.

Paul nodded, Jo could see that he wasn't sure what to say, and he filled the silence. "Since Kevin didn't have any family, we took him in while he recovered, since we had a spare room."

"That's very kind of you." Paul looked at Nico, and he knew what he was going to ask. "Why didn't you bring him back to Monaco?"

"He didn't speak any English, it kind of makes things difficult when there's no common language."

"Oh." Paul was trying to pick his way through the conversation but no amount of tea could make it less awkward. "So have you learned…"

"Danish. Yes, although it's not perfect, and Kevin's learnt English."

Paul nodded some more and he was in danger of straining his neck at this rate.

"Kevin's going to be living here from now on, and he's going to travel to races with me," Nico said, and Kevin smiled at him.

"How old is he?" Paul asked, staring at Nico. Stoffel had guessed Kevin's age based on the estimate from the police.

"Twenty-three."

Paul raised an eyebrow, but to his credit he didn't say anything. Five or so years wasn't a huge age gap, but there was something about the way he acted that made him appear much younger.

"No-one else knows," Nico said, and Paul nodded, he didn't need to be told about how much of an issue it was in their profession.

"You know I'll always be your friend, no matter what." Paul downed the rest of his tea. "I should be going, feeding time for the little one." Paul smiled and Nico stood up to give him a hug goodbye, there was a kiss on the cheek and Kevin looked at Nico with curiosity. Nico knew that he was going to have to tell Kevin everything, but not now, he would let him settle in first.

Nico wandered back through to the living room to see Kevin and Marcus deep in conversation, and he waited for someone to speak in English.

"Paul's your ex, right?" Marcus asked, and Kevin just looked at him, no sign of anger or hurt on his face, just curiosity.

"Ja." Nico sat down next to Kevin, holding his hand tight. "Can you tell him it was a long time ago? That I love him and only him."

Marcus translated it all, and Nico wondered if this was a good idea, having Kevin live with him when they couldn't talk about things like this.

"He understands, he left a bride at home."

Nico felt a stab of jealousy, and a horrible thought crossed his mind, did Kevin have children that he'd left behind?

Kevin was still talking to Marcus, and Nico was sure that the confusion was showing on his face.

"He didn't have children, their marriage was for power, to join their families, rather than love."

"Ah." Nico felt his body relax, and he squirmed a little closer to Kevin.

"I love you," Kevin said, stroking the side of Nico's face. His eyelashes fluttered and Nico leant in for a kiss.

"I love you too." Nico sat back so that Kevin could snuggle in, and Nico realised that this was his best chance to talk about the other thing that was on his mind. "Can you ask Kevin if he wants to be out as a couple? Since I'm not sure that he's going to want to let go of my hand in public."

It hadn't been an issue so far, no-one really knew Nico in Sweden, in fact, away from race weekends hardly anyone ever recognised him, so he'd merged in with the crowds. But in the paddock he wasn't going to have that luxury, and the eyes of the world were going to be on them.

Marcus talked to Kevin for the longest time, no doubt explaining what it meant to be 'out' and from the look on his face, the same mix of sadness and confusion that he'd had after they'd taken him to the museum, he wasn't thrilled about the way the world was now.

"Another coffee?" Jo asked, as Marcus and Kevin were deep in conversation, and they showed no signs of stopping to translate for either of them.

"I'll come help you," Nico said, trying not to glance at the pale carpets, but Jo only laughed.

When they returned Kevin was fidgeting with his hands, and Nico felt his stomach churn.

"Kevin says that he doesn't back away from a fight, he's proud to stand by you."

"I'm so proud of you," Nico said slowly, hoping that Kevin would understand, and from the way his smile shone out, he got the important bits.

"So are you going to tell the world now?" Marcus asked, and Jo nudged him, it wasn't really any of his business, even if he did have a front row seat to it all.

"No. I'm going to show up to testing with my boyfriend, and they can say whatever they want about it." Nico laughed, after all these years of having close female friends show up to races so that people would assume they were his girlfriends, and now he was going to show up with the love of his life.

"We'll be there standing by you," Jo said, as Nico sipped at his coffee, causing his stomach to rumble.

"I know, and now, I think that it's time for lunch."

*

Lunch was at a quiet little place down by the sea, and Nico had avoided eye contact with anyone on the way there, ignoring their curious looks as to why Kevin was holding his hand. Jo realised that him and Marcus didn't have that issue, mainly because it was awkward to hold hands with the crutch, although it didn't stop them, but it looked more like Marcus was helping his infirm friend rather than wanting to be close to his lover.

At least the waitress didn't say anything when she saw Nico, either she didn't recognise him or she had more tact than some of Nico's fellow drivers.

"The food's nice," Jo said, in a bid to distract Nico from his thoughts, and Kevin devoured a chicken sandwich with alarming speed, much to Nico's admiration.

The conversation flowed easily, and it was a nice afternoon, warm sun glinting off the sea and the fresh air making everything feel summery compared to the brisk, icy climates that they had left.

"I think we're going to go for a walk along the beach," Marcus said, and the way Kevin nodded at him meant that Jo knew exactly what Kevin was planning on doing when he got Nico back to the flat.

"Yes, that sounds nice." Jo tried to pay for their half of lunch but Nico wouldn't accept it, and they left to go for their walk, leaving Nico and Kevin staring at each other with big eyes.

*

Nico had almost ran back to the flat, walking quickly as he held Kevin's hand, the knowledge of what was to come only adding to the anticipation. They fell through the front door in a flurry of limbs, Kevin pinning Nico to the wall as he let his tongue roam, pressing their bodies together as his hands wandered down to rub at the bulge in Nico's jeans. Nico broke the kiss, and he only had to utter one word to put the smile back on Kevin's face.

"Bedroom?"

Kevin took Nico's hand as he led the way, he'd worry about showing Kevin the rest of the flat some other time, for now only one room mattered, the room with the bed.

Nico was getting rid of his clothes with alarming speed, leaving a trail of clothes as Kevin followed his lead and by the time they got to the bedroom they were both naked.

And that was when Nico was in for a surprise, Kevin had a tattoo, a large tattoo that covered his chest, in the shape of an angel. 

It was so intricate and Nico found himself running his fingers over it, taking in every detail as Kevin sighed under Nico's gentle touch. His hard cock stood proud, leaking just from the sight of Nico naked.

Kevin pushed Nico back on to the bed, straddling him as they kissed passionately, Nico's big hands holding his hips tight as he tried to slow things down, but Kevin was having none of it, he was fingering himself open as pained moans fell from his lips, breathless gasps that sent Nico's senses into overdrive, urging him to seek out more.

Nico sucked on two of his fingers, trailing them down Kevin's back before sliding one inside him, curling it just enough to hit the right spot. Kevin gasped as Nico's tongue and fingers worked in tandem, his hand wrapped around the side of his neck as he felt Kevin's pulse race with the thrill of it all.

He slid another finger in, stretching Kevin wide and the way that his mouth hung open as he adjusted to it all, his breathing ragged and eyes black with lust, was the most beautiful thing that Nico had ever seen.

"Condom now?" Kevin asked, and his cheeky smile said everything, he was fully in control, and even though he couldn't hold more than a simple conversation in English, he'd learned everything he needed to make sure that he got what he wanted.

"Yes." Nico nodded furiously and he arched up to kiss Kevin as he withdrew his fingers, soothing him with his tongue as he leant out of the bed, Kevin trailing kisses down the side of his neck as Nico fumbled in the bedside drawer for a condom.

He was starting to panic when he felt the little foil packet and he breathed a sigh of relief. Kevin's eyes lit up at the sight of it, but so far he'd only got to practice putting them on vegetables, which had been funny just to see Jo blush furiously while trying to make sure that Kevin was able to handle these things for himself. It was both adorable and hysterical, and Nico found himself grinning just from the thought of it.

Kevin wasn't waiting for Nico, he took the condom and opened it with his teeth, sliding it out and rolling it on to Nico's cock with effortless grace. He was a natural at it and that only made Nico harder.

He went in for another kiss as Kevin wiggled his hips, lining up with the tip of his cock as he got comfy, grin on his face as he waited for Nico to look at him before sinking down. Kevin took every inch of him in one go and Nico was so shocked by the feeling of how warm and snug Kevin was around him that he held his breath until their bodies were touching.

Nico's eyes fell shut and it wasn't until Kevin ran his fingers over his lips that he took a deep breath and started to move, little thrusts at first as he watched Kevin bite his lip, adjust to the stretch. But then Kevin was taking back control, riding Nico with such power that Nico had to focus on not coming, on giving Kevin the most the most spectacular orgasm.

He sat up, forcing their bodies even closer and trapping Kevin's cock against his abs, it was already leaking and he wrapped Kevin up in his arms so that he could slow the pace, make it last.

Nico kissed him until he was gasping for air, hips never slowing as he nuzzled at the side of Kevin's neck, feeling his muscles flutter as he swiped a thumb over Kevin's erect nipples, teasing him until he was crying out for more and Nico thrust into him one last time, feeling his muscles contract as warm come spurted all over his abs.

"I love you," Kevin whispered, and seeing Kevin look so satisfied was all it took to have Nico coming hard, holding Kevin tight as he shuddered in orgasm, biting down on Kevin's shoulder as he moaned in pleasure.

"I love you too." Nico kissed at the red mark on Kevin's shoulder.

"I'm yours," Kevin said, as he ran his fingers over the bite mark, and Nico wondered whether it was Jo or Marcus that said that, but he didn't care where he'd learnt it, just that he was happy to be with him.

"And I'm yours."

They lay together for the longest time, lazy kisses and soft fingers brushing against equally soft skin, no words were needed. It was perfection.


	7. Nanna

"Do you think Kevin will be okay here with Nico?" Jo asked, he was thinking out loud more than looking for an answer, but he wanted someone to tell him that it would all be fine, since he felt responsible for Kevin now.

"He will be fine, you see how happy Nico makes him, and the fact that he's learnt Danish for him says that he's in it for the long term."

Jo held Marcus tight, the flat was going to seem to empty without him, it was like their child had grown up and was leaving home. For all that they joked about 'what would you be like with kids' they'd never talked about children, and looking after Kevin had made Jo realise that as much as he liked kids, he didn't want to do this all the time, that one day being the cool uncle was what he wanted.

"Do you want kids?" Jo asked, and Marcus' eyes flew open.

Marcus bit on his lip, and Jo could see him wondering what had brought this on. "No, I like going to sites, travelling the world, and I know it's selfish, but kids would get in the way of that."

"That's how I feel." Jo leant in for a kiss, chaste since they were in public, but they didn't usually do this sort of thing, so it was extravagant for them.

The rest of their holiday flew by, and they were glad that Kevin seemed to settle in to his new place, although he seemed happy wherever Nico was, which meant that he was going to have no problem travelling the world with him.

As they headed to Barcelona, Jo still envied Kevin's ability to sleep on flights, and he worried what would happen once the whole world saw that Nico had a boyfriend. He wanted to believe that people would be happy for them, but he knew that it wouldn't be true, no matter what there would be hate and he just hoped that Nico could protect Kevin from the worst of it. As unfair as it was, Nico was used to the media, the fans, and Kevin for all his new found confidence, was still a stranger in a strange land.

***

Jo and Marcus seemed to be more nervous than Nico was, and Kevin was oblivious to it all, just happy to be next to his boyfriend. Which was fine now that they were having breakfast in the hotel, away from prying eyes, but soon they were going to be heading to the track, and then all the attention was going to be on them.

Nico's physio barely batted an eyelid at Kevin, but from the atmosphere in the car, things were stilted, and Jo wasn't sure if this was normal or not. Although from Nico's face, he wasn't exactly relaxed about everything.

"Just follow me, and whatever you do, don't say anything to them." Nico found out his pass, and he placed Kevin's around his neck, giving him a kiss on the nose, which didn't sit right with his physio.

Jo took a deep breath, it was going to be a long day of worrying about his friends, with no idea what to do to comfort them.

Nico was staring into Kevin's eyes, wondering if this was the right thing to do, or was he just taking advantage of Kevin's naivety to justify his own need to come out? He knew that Kevin seemed happy with it, but would he still feel that way after the media had hounded them?

"Are you ready?" Nico asked Kevin, and he nodded, but Nico had no way of knowing if Kevin had actually understood what he was saying, or if he was just agreeing with him anyway. It was too late now, they were parked, and he had to get to the garage.

Nico held Kevin's hand tight, more for his benefit than Kevin's and they made it through security without too many funny looks, although Jo and his crutch were taking some of the attention away. He was starting to think that he could make it all the way to the garage without running into any press when he spotted a familiar face, and he was torn between ducking into the Sauber garage or facing Ted.

"Hi, have a nice winter break?" Ted asked, and Nico was glad that he started with an easy question.

"Yes, went to visit some friends, went home for Christmas, the usual." _Hit a guy with my car, and it turned out he was a Viking so we tried to hide him from the press and now we're dating…_

"Sounds nice. How are you feeling about the new car?"

Nico looked down at where he was holding hands with Kevin, just to make sure he was still close since Ted was acting like he couldn't even see Kevin. He chatted away about the new car, and how he'd spent a lot of time in the simulator, so he felt confident about it all.

Ted nodded thoughtfully as Nico talked and just as he thought he was going to get away without having to say anything about his relationship, Ted spoke, "Who's this?"

"Kevin."

Nico felt all of his nerves disappear and he said 'bye' before heading to the Force India motorhome, leaving Ted flicking through his notebook and talking to himself as he was prone to do.

 _Well that didn't go too badly,_ Nico thought, although Marcus' idea of actually preparing something for the media sounded more and more appealing.

*

Leaving Kevin had been harder than he thought, and although he'd tried to find somewhere a little private, there wasn't anywhere that was totally away from prying eyes and at least one mechanic had muttered something under his breath as he'd given Kevin a goodbye kiss.

Hopefully it was one of Checo's mechanics, the last thing he needed was to worry about his car. When he strolled into the garage, helmet in hand, he saw a guy talking to Checo, and they both glanced in his direction before looking away. At least that answered one question.

Luckily he was in the car today, and that would give him a much needed distraction for the next few hours. Once the visor was down his mind was focused on one thing and one thing only, driving.

*

Lunchtime rolled around and Nico was hoping that he'd get to spend a bit of time with Kevin but he got no such luck. Checo came up to talk to him as he was getting out of his race suit and Nico braced himself for the worst.

"Your boyfriend's cute." Checo waited for Nico to stop blinking and breathe again before continuing. "But a couple of the mechanics have been talking to the press, and they're all here now."

"Right." Nico wasn't sure what to say, the fact that Checo didn't seem bothered was a relief, but the press having all decided to come and say hi to him was a little disconcerting.

"Otmar's looking for you." Checo fidgeted with the cord for his headphones and Nico couldn't tell what the look on his face was.

"Does he look mad?"

"I can't tell, he always has the same expression."

Nico laughed, even though he knew that he shouldn't but Otmar was strangely neutral on everything, always so balanced and rational, and Nico wasn't sure if that was a comfort or not.

"Thanks for the heads up." Nico bumped fists with Checo, they'd known each other for years and it was nice that he hadn't lost a friend, he wasn't sure he could cope with being judged by those close to him.

Nico snuck out the back of the garage, heading for the side entrance to the motorhome when Otmar caught up with him.

"There's quite a collection of reporters looking to talk to you."

Nico nodded, unsure of what to say, what Otmar wanted him to say.

"We can write up a press release or you can face them in person, it's up to you." Nico chewed on his lip, his hand automatically reaching out for Kevin but he wasn't there.

He'd made the decision to be out, but now the time was here he felt apprehensive, why did anyone care who he dated? Nico knew the answer, because he was in the public eye, which meant that people felt like they were owed information about his private life.

"I'll talk to them now, let's get it over with." Nico shook his head, and with that he strode into the room with his most charming smile on. He just wanted to get it all over with as quickly as possible.

There was a lot of noise as he entered, and the press officer got them to all quiet down. Nico felt like he was on trial, and in a way he was, they were here to judge him and the way that he lived his life.

The first question was what everyone wanted to know – was he gay?

"No." Nico sat back in his chair, he actually felt his shoulders relax a little, he was going to make this as difficult as possible for them.

"But the man you came in with this morning, isn't he your boyfriend?" The room was so crowded that Nico couldn't see who spoke, most of the faces were familiar to him, but they had all lost their friendly persona while they were in pursuit of a juicy story.

"Yes." Nico tried not to smirk, it was fun having a little bit of control over the situation. He could actually see the confusion on some people's faces, but that worried him a bit.

"So, are you bisexual?"

Nico wanted to stand up applaud sarcastically, but he settled for saying 'yes' in the most monotone voice possible.

The rest of the questions after that were easier. Towards the end a lot of the crowd had wandered off, no doubt to report on their exclusive and find as many photos of him and Kevin as they could. He kept Kevin's name out of it, although it wouldn't stay secret for long, there weren't that many guests in the motorhome today.

Nico also asked them to respect his privacy, but he wasn't sure how far that would go for him. It was fine with the other drivers and their girlfriends. And for Susie and Toto, but he knew that things weren't going to be quite as simple for him.

He got back in the car hungry, dealing with the media had cut into his lunch, but he was glad that it was over with now. There would be more questions, that he had no doubt about, but the worst of it was over.

*

The rest of the week flew by, and Nico managed to keep Kevin out of the way of the press, thanks in part to the team looking out for him. Even if a few people in the garage clearly weren't thrilled about it, the overall working environment was much the same, and that was a win of sorts.

***

The weeks flew and they were finally in Australia, Kevin's English had come on a lot since he'd had to use it so much in the garage, and with Paul, who had been checking up on them.

It was nice that they were able to talk more, but Nico worried about the media talking to him now, there was a lot more press here for the race weekend. And everyone had heard that Nico was bi, and dating a man.

There was a collection of people waiting for them as they went through security, and everyone was trying to get Kevin's name, but they just kept walking.

Kevin said 'hi' to them all, and a few remarked that they were a cute couple. As they got farther down the paddock, quite a few had given up, gone in search of more interesting stories, like how Vettel felt about having Dan as his teammate or interviewing Toro Rosso's newest driver, Alex Lynn.

Once they got to the motorhome Nico leant in for a proper kiss but Kevin wanted more, his hands were wandering and Nico felt his hard cock press against his thigh. It was crowded in his little room at the back of the motorhome, barely big enough for the two of them, but Nico knew what he wanted to do.

"Do you think you can be quiet?" Nico asked, and Kevin nodded, licking his lips as he waited to see what Nico would do next.

He gave Kevin one last kiss, his hand wandering down to unzip his jeans before sinking to his knees, looking up at Kevin who was grinning in anticipation. Nico slowly inched Kevin's boxers down, letting Kevin's hard cock spring free, and he wasted no time in taking him into his mouth, teasing him with his tongue as he gently cupped his balls.

It didn't take long before Kevin was grasping at his hair, holding his head tight as he shuddered in orgasm, the taste of him filling his mouth and Nico sucked up every last drop.

Kevin was breathless and smiling, and it was exactly what Nico had needed to take his mind off everything.

*

On the way out after qualifying on Saturday, Nico was surrounded by journalists, not for the fact that he'd be starting fourth on the grid tomorrow, but because they wanted to know more about his relationship.

"Doesn't he speak English?" someone asked, and Nico wanted to say no, use that to keep them away from Kevin, but it wasn't right that he was being forced into this situation.

"I speak English," Kevin said, and Nico could feel him squeezing his hand tight.

"Do you have a name?"

"Yes."

Nico laughed at how cheeky Kevin was, and they wandered out of the paddock with smiles on their faces, but it didn't take long for the media to get the information that they wanted. They had Kevin's name now, and Nico wasn't happy that someone in the garage must have tipped them off, but it was just a first name, and Nico was sure that they couldn't work out who he was just from that.

Stoffel had seen to the back story; that he'd served overseas in combat before returning home to recover from his injuries, and now he was studying towards qualifications. It was flimsy and if people went digging they would find huge holes in it all, but that would take illicit means, and Nico wasn't sure that any of the reporters were that bothered about his boyfriend. He hoped.

*

As the season wore on the fuss died down. Kevin was a regular fixture at race weekends, and it started to feel like things were getting back to the way they used to be last season. The press wanted to talk about his racing rather than his love life, and being a midfield driver meant that they weren't knocking on his door too often, which he was glad for.

***

Summer came round in a blaze of airports and hotels, and Nico felt strange to be back in Jo and Marcus' flat. It felt like so long ago that he called this place home, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever thanked them, not properly, for everything that they'd done for him and Kevin. He couldn't imagine taking strangers into his house, and definitely not someone that had just been discharged from the hospital, and who didn't have any ID or paperwork.

"How's the research going?" Nico asked, thanking Jo for the coffee as Kevin cuddled in.

"Good," Jo and Marcus said at the same time. They laughed, and Jo was sure that Nico wasn't quite as interested in physics, especially with his new found interest in the Viking era.

Marcus chatted away and Nico was glad to have a little time away from all the stress of being in the spotlight, although the fuss had died down, but he was never able to fully relax. He was glad that Kevin had decided to travel with him, for the thought of being separated from him, although he was sure that he could if he had to, wasn't an appealing thought.

"I'm worried that the media will work out that Kevin's a Viking," Nico said, they had been talking about Kevin finishing college, but it had been on his mind for a while, and if anyone knew what to do it would be Marcus.

"We would never tell them," Jo said, and Marcus nodded.

"I know you wouldn't, but with the internet and everything, what if people put it all together?" Kevin looked at him with his brow furrowed, and Nico wished that he didn't understand English right now, but he just couldn't keep his worries in any longer.

"The police didn't take photographs of us, so there's no record that way, the CCTV will have been wiped by now," Jo said, counting each item off on his fingers, "And he was known only as 'Ketilløgh' on the documents to do with his discovery, so there's nothing to link them that way."

"I'm the only one with a DNA sample, and I've deliberately left parts of the sequence out in the report, so that no-one can ever use it to match with Kevin." Marcus bit at his lip before continuing. "But I can't imagine anyone ever having reason to compare his sample with Viking remains."

"My family?" Kevin said, and Jo shook his head, it had been a shock for him and Nico to see the remains of Kevin's mother, but to see his own mother as a centuries old skeleton, that was unimaginable.

"Yes, your mother." Marcus looked down at his cup and Nico held Kevin tight, kissing his forehead as he processed it all. "Do you want to see her?"

Kevin shook his head, he'd seen the bones at the museum and he couldn't bear to see his own mother like that. "Will she get a proper burial?"

Marcus was still staring at his cup, but Jo had never heard of them actually reburying the skeletons that they exhumed, they were always kept for further study.

"I will make sure of it," Marcus said, and there was nothing but sadness in his voice.

There was a long silence, only the faint sound of traffic outside could be heard and Jo felt conflicted. For the first time he had to deal with the grey areas to Marcus' field, and he didn't like what he saw, Marcus was going to have to choose between respecting a friend's wishes, or being fired if he was caught doing it.

"I can't take this tension," Kevin said, "Let's get lunch." Nico nodded, pulling Kevin into a big hug, stroking his back as he waited for him to relax.

Jo grabbed his crutch and he knew the perfect place to take Nico for food – an all-you-can-eat buffet.

*

Food helped change the subject, and was glad for the respite. Marcus still looked lost in his thoughts, but once he'd had some food a smile appeared and Jo relaxed a bit.

"Your English has got so good," Jo said, and Kevin looked proud. They'd all been talking in English the whole time and Kevin showed no sign that he wasn't keeping up with the conversation.

"Thank you. I was thinking of learning German next." Kevin smiled at Nico, and he looked so totally in love with Kevin that it was bordering on sickly.

"What are you going to do next?"

Kevin had talked about a few options, but he seemed happy travelling with Nico, but Jo wasn't sure if that would be enough for Kevin.

"I like cars."

Marcus laughed, and Nico smiled, it wasn't a surprise that he'd pick a profession that would keep him close to Nico. Although he did seem to have an affinity for cars and he was a better flyer than Jo was, so this was clearly a life that suited Kevin.

A few more platefuls of food and the conversation got round to the media again.

"Most of the fuss has died down, and there hasn't been any major exodus of sponsors, so it's all back to the way it was before," Nico said, as he proceeded to shovel in another forkful of fake beef and broccoli.

"It's been fun," Kevin said, and Nico nodded. Having someone to travel with him had been a blessing, and although he'd worried that he was only doing it for his own selfish reasons, Nico had seen Kevin grow more confident by the day. It had been a wonderful thing to see, and Nico was glad that he could be a part of it.

The rest of the holiday was nice, Nico was glad to be away from the watchful eye of the media and focus on enjoying his time with Kevin. It was all over too soon, but Jo and Marcus had made them promise that they would come visit before Christmas, so that they could spend some of the holidays together in better circumstances than last year.

*

Towards the end of the holiday, Stoffel got the paperwork to release the remains of Kevin's mother, and the five of them stood around as she was lowered back into the ground. A small stone with runes inscribed on it the only remembrance, but that was enough.

***

A few months passed and Marcus had finally finished analysing all the data from his dig. Jo had agreed to meet him after work so that they could go celebrate.

Jo had expected to see him looking happy, or at least relieved, but he was staring at the computer with his brow furrowed and his lips compressed.

"Don't tell me it's crashed," Jo said, computer failures were the bane of his existence, followed closely by rodents chewing wires.

Marcus shook his head, his mouth moved as though he was going to speak but no words came out. He fumbled for something on his desk and held up what looked like a thick canvas sack.

Jo looked closer and he saw blood spots on the fabric, but it looked too new to be something that he had excavated.

"What is it?" Jo asked, although he could think of only one thing that would be new and from the Viking age at the same time. Kevin's clothes that he came through with. The police had given them back to Kevin, as they were his personal possessions, and he had given them to Marcus for his research, since things of that sort were difficult to find well-preserved.

"These blood spots, I put them in the system, but there was no match." Marcus' words were slow, as though there was a time delay between his mind and his mouth.

"Okay." Jo moved closer to Marcus who still looked lost in his thoughts, and he tried to hug him but he shied away from his touch.

"So, I put my own DNA through the system." Marcus shrugged, his face was blank now, even though Jo could see the confusion bubbling under the surface.

Jo nodded, but he wasn't sure what Marcus needed right now, to be left to work or to be dragged away from it.

"It's my blood," Marcus said, and with that he fainted.

Jo caught him just before he hit the ground, his knee slamming against the hard concrete floor as his crutch fell, the noise echoing around the room.

When Marcus came to, he looked so pale, but Jo was in no position to move him to fresh air, he'd probably only drop him again.

"How… How can that be?" Jo asked, and Marcus blinked a few times before.

"You know I'm adopted, right?" Marcus waited for Jo to nod before continuing. "When they found me I didn't remember anything, and they thought it was trauma. But then I started remembering things, like being in battle and having a sword. And they said that was trauma too, that my mind was making things up to cover the truth."

Jo stroked the side of Marcus' face, he just had to do something to comfort him, to let him know he was there. His eyes were so distant, remembering a time long ago through the haze of his memories.

"I believed them, and then they found me a nice family. It was all so nice that I convinced myself that my mind had been playing tricks on me, but I never forgot." Marcus laughed, and his smile was wistful. "I guess that's why I chose to study the Vikings."

Tears were running down Marcus' face and he looked so young. Jo wiped the tears away, holding him until he was all cried out. He had never pushed Marcus to talk about his childhood, and he wasn't going to do it now.

"I will always love you, no matter what."

***

"Min kærlighed til dig er stærkere end mit sværd," Kevin said, and he held out a small ring, as Nico looked thoughtful.

"My love for you is stronger than my sword?"

"Yes." Kevin grinned and held the ring higher. They were sat on the beach, even though it was far too cold at this time of year, and the setting sun was rapidly stealing their heat.

"Yes." Nico slid the ring on his finger, and he pulled out his wallet to reveal a ring that had been hidden away. "For you."

Kevin beamed with pride as he looked at the silver band, so pure and strong, just like their love.

***

The wedding was a quiet ceremony over the winter break, in Emmerich, so that Nico's family could all attend. Jo and Marcus were there, and Kevin had been practicing his vows in German, so that he could surprise Nico with them.

Marcus looked around at the happy couple, the happy family, and he thought of his own family, who had taken him in and loved him like he was their own. He now knew that it didn't matter where, or when, you were from, love was the one constant that made us all human.


End file.
